Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel

by Lyn Benedict

  Sylvie left Alex hunched over her laptop, one hand snarled into her short, wild hair, the other clicking through screens that opened and closed with such rapidity that it might as well be arcane magic that guided her. She hoped it was comforting.

  Outside, out of Alex’s sight, Sylvie’s shoulders sagged. Her bravado faded. The nighttime air, hot and still, felt charged, electric with change. With chaos. The peace before disaster.

  Her tongue felt dry and heavy in her mouth, choking her with the weight of all the anxious words she couldn’t say. It tasted of cooling asphalt, unsweetened by the jasmine nearby.

  Her phone was in her hand again, Demalion’s number picked out. She closed the phone without pressing SEND.

  Wondered, if he were dead, who would tell her? Not the ISI, who hadn’t connected Adam Wright with Sylvie Lightner. Maybe Adam Wright’s ex-wife would get the call. Maybe then she’d call Sylvie to pass the news on, that the man who’d taken over her husband’s body had lost his own hold on it in the end.

  Most likely, it would be Alex, hunting through the casualty roster, refusing to tell her over the phone. Sylvie would have to watch Alex picking the careful words, trying to be gentle, while her face telegraphed every detail. She scrubbed a quick hand across her eyes.

  Cowardice, her little dark voice said. To give up before the battle’s even joined.

  Sylvie let its contempt steady her. It was right. It so often was. Older and wiser than she was. That genetic leftover from Lilith’s blood. As if Sylvie’s synapses occasionally fired in a different pattern, an older pattern, a memory trail that was laid in before she was born. A memory, given voice.

  Demalion wasn’t dead yet. And he’d survived worse. This, whatever it was, hadn’t been aimed specifically at him. He’d survived when the Furies had torn his flesh apart and sent his soul fleeing to the first sanctuary it found: Adam Wright’s body.

  She had better things to do with her time than mourn him prematurely.

  NEXT MORNING FOUND HER SITTING IN ALEX’S JEEP OUTSIDE THE hotel that housed the ISI while dawn pushed back the skyline, spreading reflected pinks and pale blues in the dark, slow, canal waters alongside the street. Her anxiety had dulled to a background simmer in her brain, an occasional skip to her breath when she thought of where Demalion might be, why he hadn’t called. Boredom had always been a good cure for terror.

  Sylvie yawned into her hand, thought about moving the Jeep again to keep ahead of the ticket-happy police who patrolled the hotel district. It was tricky, though. She wasn’t the only watcher. She’d seen more than one agency SUV with suspicious shadows behind tinted glass. Keeping an eye on their perimeter.

  She rolled down the window, sucked in a breath of Miami at morning when it was clean and green. The ISI surveillance made watching their HQ that much more difficult; she had to evade their eyes as well as the traffic cops while staying in close proximity. Really, she should have just slumped low, let the tickets accrete on the windshield, and let them assume the car was abandoned.

  Alex would have bitched, though, and with the ISI on alert, odds were the Jeep would have been towed at first ticketing.

  Sylvie squirmed; Alex’s fabric seat covers wrinkled beneath her, creating uncomfortable ridges. She missed her truck and its leather seats and her stock of canned drinks and snacks. But Alex’s Jeep wasn’t bright red with a werewolf-clawed hood. Sylvie loved her truck, but it was the very opposite of subtle.

  A gull wheeled out of the dark, white feathers reflecting the sun, heading for the docks and the fishermen chopping chum for a day on the water. Sylvie thought of those men, weathered by sun, stubble-faced, shirtless, wielding cleavers with one hand and slurping coffee with the other, and decided the ISI could fend for itself long enough for her to grab breakfast and a bathroom break.

  SYLVIE WANTED REAL FOOD BUT COMPROMISED ON A STARBUCKS and took a seat outside, slanting her gaze down the street, where she could keep an eye on the art-deco front of the ISI hotel. The streets trickled to life; first, men and women heading to work, clogging the roads, bleary-eyed and cranky, their radios blaring NPR, Spanish talk radio, the shock jocks. When that rush passed, the early tourists began emerging from the hotels, equally bleary-eyed, but smiling or fussing and juggling maps and children.

  Sylvie finished her first coffee, went back for a refill, and found the second seat at her outside table occupied when she returned. Erinya’s boot scuffed at the sandy concrete; the other leg was tucked up beneath her. Her collarbone and cheekbones stood out like ridges under her skin, as if being a god was whittling her away.

  She looked up as Sylvie approached, her eyes as black and starved as a starless night, and said, “I want coffee, too. And a croissant.”

  Sylvie turned on her heel and went back inside, resisting the urge to point out that Erinya could create any breakfast she wanted. It was better for everyone involved if she kept her godly powers unexplored. Gods shed enough as it was, warping the world by their very presence, unless they were very big on self-control.

  Through the window, Sylvie watched Erinya testing her fingernails against the tabletop. Wood peeled back as easily as torn paper. Erinya used the slivers to pick at the mortar in the window seam, then dropped those stony chips into Sylvie’s coffee, smirking.

  Yeah.

  Erinya was a lot of things. Self-controlled? Not so much.

  Sylvie’s mouth tightened. Little as she liked it, Dunne was right about that. Erinya couldn’t keep coming around. The world, as it was, couldn’t withstand her.

  Sylvie collected Erinya’s food and rejoined her. She waited until the erstwhile Fury had a mouthful of pastry to say, “You can’t stay here, you know. You’re damaging the world.”

  Erinya laughed. “The world’s ruined already. I’m making it better. I killed a witch last night.”

  “You did,” Sylvie said, flatly. She needed a witch and couldn’t find one to save Lupe’s life, and Erinya was picking them off like low-hanging fruit.

  Her attention veered back toward the ISI building as a crowd of people moved toward the entrance. Today, there was a doorman. An agent masquerading as a servant. She had to grin at the sight. Those bastards. Thought they were so clever, basing themselves out of a hotel, figuring no one would look for them there. Now they had to reap what they’d sown: They expected an attack and couldn’t lock down without drawing exactly the kind of attention they didn’t want.

  Plus it did her heart good to watch the agent being harried by hotel guests, trying to hail cabs and cart luggage in and out, and getting stiffed for tips.

  Erinya slurped her coffee, continued her tale, unprompted. “Her daughter was chained up in the pool house, had just given birth. The witch boiled the infant so it could be used for spellwork. Bones and fat, skin and tongue.”

  Sylvie’s attention jerked back; her stomach soured.

  Erinya leaned forward, hands flat on the table, nails digging in. Her expression was predatory, hungry. “I took her out of the world. She offered the infant’s heart up for power, prayed for a god to attend her, offered her worship. She didn’t specify which god. I was faster than the rest. I was already here. I did good. You should be thanking me. Not telling me to go away. You don’t have the right.” Arrogance rang in Erinya’s voice, echoed across the water, rang against buildings like a trumpet’s call.

  People on the street shivered, staggered by the surge.

  At Sylvie’s feet, blood-colored flowers pushed through the pavement, spreading petals like opening mouths. Vines twined around them, curled up the table legs. Erinya growled; the jungle slunk back into the concrete.

  “Did you let the daughter out of the pool house?”

  Erinya blinked, sank back into her seat. Crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Did you leave her there, chained in the dark, injured and afraid, grieving, calling for help?”

  “… I can go back.”

  “You can’t stick around,” Sylvie repeated. “I know your intentions are good, bu
t you’re a god now. You can’t—”

  Erinya’s shoulders rounded; she caved inward. “I’m lonely. There’s no one good in my god space. I don’t like it there. I miss my sisters.”

  “I thought you were sick of them bossing you around.”

  Erinya’s fangs, razor-edged, dented her lower lip. “I miss fighting with my sisters.”

  “Then make minions of your own,” Sylvie said. “Make them mouthy. Make them tough enough to stand up to you.”

  “I could have you—”

  “No,” Sylvie said. “No.”

  Silence fell across the table; Erinya’s sulking spread outward. The other patrons in the tiny courtyard let their drinks go, ignored their food.

  A bird crashed into the glass storefront with an unpleasant thunk and bounced downward. The man closest to the bird jumped from his table, grabbed the corpse, and brought it to Erinya.

  “For you,” he said. His gaze was adoring. His hands, covered by the wings, trembled, giving the dead bird the illusion of imminent flight.

  Erinya smiled, her human slipping. Her teeth gleamed like new razors; spotted feathers sprouted from her hair and nape.

  “Thank you,” she said. She leaned forward, kissed the man, claiming him for her own; he stepped away, dazed, his mouth bloody where her fangs had scored his skin.

  Erinya licked her lips, plucked the bird’s heart out with jagged claws, and ate it in a single bite, lapping at her fingers afterward. The smell of blood was sharp, as metallic as a bullet. Sylvie wondered suddenly if Erinya had killed the witch before or after she’d eaten the infant’s offered heart.

  Sylvie shuddered. “You can’t stay.”

  “Do you smell that?” Erinya asked, her head coming up, eyes going unfocused.

  Sylvie sniffed. She smelled a lot of things. Car exhaust, coffee, the woman two seats over who had decided to go for broke when she slathered on the Giorgio. Erinya’s bloody snack. The scent of salt air, a taste of canal rankness … and something else. Something slight, but pervasive, rippling along beneath everything else, lifting the other scents.

  “What is that?”

  “Something wet,” Erinya said, shaking herself fastidiously. Catlike. When she’d been just a Fury—just—she’d seemed more doglike. Now that she’d incorporated Tepeyollotl’s powers into her own, her animal aspect, more mythic than real, edged toward cat.

  “How about a little more detail?” Sylvie shot a glance toward the ISI. All serene. Annoyingly so. She hated wasting her time.

  “Smells old?”

  “Old like a Mundi monster? Like the Sphinx?” Sylvie’s heart skipped, equal parts anticipation and pain. Demalion was bright in her mind again, an absence that felt like a weight.

  Erinya curled her lips into a satisfied smile. “Old like drowned bones. I know what they are. Mermaids.”

  Her gaze lasered into the canal. Sylvie almost protested. Mermaids?

  The canal waters rose like a tsunami and slammed into the ISI building.

  THE SOUND OF IT WAS BREATHTAKING, A SOUND THAT HIT LIKE A body blow—the crash and thunder of pouring water, the gunshot cracking of glass, the screech of metal as cars were shoved aside. Beneath it all, another noise. Something wild and inhuman, like whale song fed through a broken autotuner.

  Sylvie, on her feet, water rolling toward her, found herself with her head cocked just like Erinya, trying to focus on that sound. How many of them? Where were they?

  All around her, people did the same, but without purpose. Just stood and listened to that alien song beneath the chaos. Ignoring the sheeting, foaming water rising, tugging at their feet, slapping up against legs like angry fish tails, spilling into shops.

  No one reacted at all.

  “Mermaids sing the sea,” Erinya said. “Coax men into the water, drown them, lick the despairing froth from their lungs like a delicacy. But if the men don’t jump. If they can’t be coaxed…

  “The mermaids bring the sea to them,” Sylvie said. For being surrounded by water, her mouth felt desert dry.

  A little boy tugged curiously at his mother’s hand, looked around, the beginnings of distress on his face. His hands flew, asking questions no one answered. No one noticed.

  He squatted, slapped at the water reaching for his mother, crying. The water, darker than it should be, slapped back. The boy fell backward, limbs flailing, and went under.

  The water was shallow on the ground, but the boy didn’t rise.

  “Eri—”

  Erinya was already moving, surging through the waves; the waves jerked back, cleared a path. Erinya, shape-shifting as she moved, never set a paw to the water, dancing above it. She jerked the boy out of the froth with her teeth, flung him toward her back. The boy, showing more sense than Sylvie had expected, clung tight to Erinya’s spiky feathers. Erinya vanished, and Sylvie was left, the only waking person in the mermaids’ murderous nightmare.

  Water cascaded down the ISI building, peeling stucco away in foaming, chalky ribbons. Sylvie put a hand on her gun, cast another glance at the dark canal waters. The mermaids were there, had to be. But they might as well have been on the moon for all she could get to them. If she was going to help the ISI, she’d have to do it one victim at a time.

  Erinya would have been more helpful here, she thought. Never mind saving the child. But that was logic, that was reason, that was fear at being hopelessly outclassed. A gun did her no good if she couldn’t get the bullets to her targets.

  Really, she was grateful that Erinya was still child-focused, still protective. That Dunne-programmed core of her—avenge crimes done to children—had been untouched by her change in god status.

  Sylvie swallowed, anxiety like the taste of dry metal in her mouth, and headed toward the ISI building. Ground zero.

  It was hard to think, hard to hear with the roar of the water, but her little dark voice was an internal sound, something even deafness wouldn’t allow her to escape.

  Be grateful to Lilith, it growled. Be grateful to me; without me, you’d be just another victim waiting for death to roll in with the tide.

  Water roared in her ears until they rang with the echoes of it, a waterfall that wrapped itself—rising and falling and rising again—around the ISI hotel, as tightly as a strangling vine.

  One of the dark SUVs lifted off the asphalt, was swept swiftly into the canal waters, its glossy finish going dull as the water rose up to envelop it.

  Something supple and quick rose out of the water, cracking the windshield with a single hard tail-lash, and vanished back into the darkness. It had been matte grey-beige, as rubber-plastic as a shark. Sylvie was left with the impression of rolling teeth and black eyes before the SUV sank, the men inside doing nothing at all as they were drowned.

  Fuck, Sylvie thought. Fuck it all.

  Water danced in the air before her, making breathing a chore, trying to filter out the rainbow shards of suspended droplets, flung into the air with such violence that they seemed like projectiles.

  The main glass door was sheeted with water, crashing and foaming; dirty water roiled behind it—a blurry, ominous shadow.

  Pressing up against the entry, Sylvie was soaked to the skin in a second as she forced the door open. The motion sensor had given up the battle at the first impact, seizing up. As she forded her way in, she cast a last glance back to see if Erinya might have returned, and caught a glimpse of another person moving among the bespelled. Dark-eyed, peak-faced, and frowning, he raised a hand toward her as if he might draw her back. His hair curled sleek and wet along his face, dripped like seaweed.

  She shook her head. Witch or whatever—she was committed now. He was on his own.

  The lobby was more peaceful than she’d expected, having had horror-movie images of bloated bodies suspended in seething waters stuck in her head. The lobby had been mostly empty when the waves struck, the clerks slumped over the desk, their legs bobbing in the water. The hotel security—ISI agent—seemed the only casualty, floating facedown in the water
, jacket flaring wide, exposing his gun. A few guests, seated on lobby furniture, drifted, staring and uncaring through the room, bumping up against walls, unmoored from the earth.

  Sylvie flipped the guard, but one glance was enough to tell her he was dead past reviving, skin already softening, bloating in the water.

  She stripped him of his keycards, left him floating. Sylvie waded toward the stairs and the cascade of water coming down, a shattering amount of noise in the concrete confines of the stairwell. She gritted her teeth, wished for earplugs, thought she was never going to find the ripple of water soothing again, and headed upward. The mermaid song—penetrating concrete, steel, glass—followed, resonating in the walls as if the rebar that supported the building acted as enormous tuning forks.

  Sylvie might be immune to the song’s effects, but it set her nerves on edge.

  The ISI had the fourth floor all to itself. Four flights wasn’t much normally, but climbing through cataracts?

  She was sweating hard with nerves and exertion by the time she made it to the fourth-floor door. Water flowed sluggishly out beneath the rim, and condensation beaded cold and foggy on the steel fire door. Sylvie ran the card through the scanner, hoping that the glowing red light meant it still worked.

  The door beeped, shorted out, but the lock popped. Sylvie, braced for a flood, found herself staring into a magical aquarium. Water glimmered and lapped at the door but didn’t do more than seep through at the edges. If she’d had any doubt that the mermaids had total control of their element, that wavering pool, a damp inch from her face, removed it.

  The people below, the people dying on the streets, the people on the other floors—they were all incidental. The mermaids intended the ISI to drown. And the only thing she could think to do was remove the mermaids’ targets and change their focus.

  Here was her horror-movie moment. Through the water, made cloudy by loose papers drifting into the hall, by stirred carpet dust, she made out bodies. A man bumped up against the hallway ceiling, swaying in a killing tide, his tie drifting, his gun holster empty, the gun itself sunk into the waving anemone plush of the carpet.