by Lyn Benedict
“I’ve been working on the Chicago site. Lots and lots of video being shot.”
“Of the actual event?” Sylvie said. “The attack?”
“The sand wraith? No. I’ve been looking through the aftermath.” Alex shook her head, answering two questions at once. Had the monster made the news? Had Alex lost memories of that attack, also? Answers: no and no.
“What exactly is a sand wraith?” Sylvie asked.
“Monster out of the Texas, New Mexico, Arizona area. I think it’s a type of djinn that migrated eons ago. Anyway, that’s not the important part. Focus, Syl. I’ve been searching through iReports on CNN. Look. Right there.”
She cued the scene up: nighttime, the rubble illuminated by emergency lights, stone and wiring and metal making crazy, nonsensical shadows, not helped by the shaky-cam hand of the filmer. “What am I—”
Sylvie shut up. She knew what Alex had wanted her to see. Six hours ago, it would have filled her with relief. Now, she watched Demalion and Marah Stone pick their way out of the rubble, dwarfed by the slabs of concrete, limping, braced on each other, and felt her heart tighten up. Christ. One thing to know Demalion had had a close call, to see him bruised but whole in her shower, full of attitude, full of life; another thing to see him like this—his eyes dark holes in his skull, face a mask of concrete dust and blood.
“Syl? This is good. He’s alive—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sylvie said. “Alive and in Miami. He made it here this morning. He’s off hunting down the Riordans. Being a good little agent and reporting in—”
“You didn’t call me? Fuck you, Sylvie. I spent hours scouring the Net and for nothing? When my head feels like it’s about to rupture?”
“Thought you were fine,” Sylvie said.
Alex burst into tears and flung the stapler at her; Sylvie dodged, listened to the metal crack against the front window, winced. Another thing for Emmanuel to fix.
“Hey, hey, I’m sorry, really sorry,” Sylvie said. “I should have called you. I was going to. I thought you were sleeping.”
“You should have left a message. A text. A fucking e-mail. I was so damn worried.” Her words tangled, choked off, left her rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“About Demalion?” Sylvie felt like she was walking across an unexpected minefield. Alex was the calm one. Alex was the sensible one. Alex didn’t throw office supplies, break windows, or curse her out. Alex didn’t usually have her memory scrambled either.
“About you, stupid. You do dumb things when you’re angry. And I’m tired. I can’t keep up with you.” Alex dragged her hands away from her eyes; she looked as tired as she claimed. More, she looked ground-down. Sylvie frowned. She couldn’t be to blame for all of that. Some of that was Alex fighting the memory modification, courting the pain by poking around similar events.
“I’m sorry,” Sylvie said again.
Alex jerked the laptop around, lips tight, not forgiving her that easily. “I compiled and skimmed about two hundred videos. My head’s still spinning.” She stabbed at the keys, brightly colored nails flashing like daggers. She turned the laptop back toward Sylvie, showing her window after window of stored video. A barrage of flickering information all set to a disaster backdrop. All of them with gold flares marking where the sand wraith had been erased from the world’s memory. CNN, Sylvie noticed, was saying that two newspeople—a reporter and her cameraman—had died when the rubble shifted unexpectedly. Sylvie looked at the last images they recorded, caught another glimpse of Marah and Demalion, running fast from … something washed out in a flicker of light … The camera image jerked forward, following the reporter, who was, in turn, following a basic journalistic rule. If you see someone running, find out what they’re running from.
Then the reporter disappeared into a cloud of dust and rubble.
“All of that. For nothing? Because you couldn’t be bothered to call?” Her cheeks were flushed, feverish.
“Alex,” Sylvie said. “I’m sorry. I can’t go back and undo it. Can we move on? Hey—”
Sylvie reached out, jabbed at the keys, trying to get one particular video to stop, and only succeeded in losing that screen altogether. “Dammit. Can you find that again?”
“Is it important?” Alex asked.
“Might be,” Sylvie said. “If I’m not seeing things. There was a bystander who looked familiar—”
Alex sighed. “And there goes my second surprise. You know, sometimes it’s just no damn fun working for you, Shadows. This the guy you meant?”
Sylvie came around to Alex’s side of the desk, dragging the visitor’s chair around with her. It couldn’t be healthy to spin the laptop around and around like a top. Sylvie looked at the image—slightly blurry, but the one she’d spotted. A wiry, dark-haired man with a beaky nose, wearing the American uniform: worn blue jeans, white T-shirt, sneakers. He should have been totally nondescript. Except … Sylvie pushed play.
He was studying the wreckage, trying to be discreet about it. Not gawking like the rest of the onlookers. Scoping it out without drawing attention to himself. He walked out of one video into the next, his damp dark hair collecting a mottled coating of dust and sand, a clear sign of how close he’d managed to get.
“So he was in Chicago,” Alex said. “Playing looky-loo. He was also in Memphis.”
“Memphis,” Sylvie said. “Did we ever find out what happened there?”
“Not a clue, but our guy was there. Maybe he knows,” Alex said. She reached over Sylvie’s shoulders, clicked another set of images onto the screen. Same man, same outfit, same damp, dark hair. Same careful prowling the border of chaos, betraying his interest by trying not to seem interested at all. Memphis. Chicago. Miami.
“So how’d you pick him out?” Alex said.
“Saw him here,” Sylvie said. “Outside the ISI. Moving when no one else could. Immune to the mermaids’ song.”
Alex whimpered, and Sylvie swallowed back further comment, waited for Alex’s eyelashes to stop flickering, her mind rewriting itself to someone else’s commands. Finally, Alex sighed, said, “What were we talking about?”
“Him,” Sylvie said, hoping she hadn’t screwed things up, hoped she hadn’t managed to link their mysterious bystander inextricably with the forbidden parts of Alex’s memory.
Alex wrinkled her nose. “Oh yeah. I’m trying to find him at the other scenes, but it’s harder. Savannah and Dallas didn’t rouse so much excitement, you know? The Savannah site was isolated. And the Dallas site was effectively cordoned off. Hard to be a face in the crowd if there’s no crowd. Even harder to film a face in a noncrowd if there’s no one to man a camera. And my head is killing me. The more I research, the worse I feel.”
Alex let out a breath, drained her coffee like it was booze after a too-long day.
Fighting the conflicting memories. Whoever was doing the changing hadn’t gotten into the ISI files to alter them. So Alex remembered those. But they were erasing the truth outside of the ISI, and Alex was dutifully trying to forget.
“Why don’t you give it a break?” Sylvie said. “Lock the door, pull down the blinds. Take a nap.”
Alex’s eyes swept the couch; she leaned forward in her chair, as if she could simply fall into the couch by wanting it. “What are you going to do?”
“Check in on Lupe,” Sylvie said. “I was supposed to do it this morning, but Demalion was at my apartment, and I got distracted.”
“Distracted, huh?” A brief smile touched Alex’s lips. “I guess I can forgive you for not calling me immediately.”
“Distracted like he brought trouble with him. You remember the ISI assassin who killed Odalys?”
“Not like you ever introduced us,” Alex said. “I know she exists.”
Sylvie found the image of Marah and Demalion whirling to confront the sand wraith, Marah’s hand upraised. She showed it to Alex. “That woman Demalion’s leaning on? Marah Stone. ISI assassin. Big trouble.”
“How big?” Al
ex asked.
“She’s been in town for a few hours, and she’s already tried to kill Erinya.”
Alex clicked her jaw shut, then said, “I’m too tired to deal with that. Go away. I’m taking a nap. Check on Lupe. She left a message on the machine. She’s found a witch she wants you to vet.”
“She what?”
“She’s impatient, I guess. Can’t really blame her,” Alex said, digging a camp pillow and blanket out of her deepest desk drawer.
“No one listens to me,” Sylvie said. “I gave her the speech. I told her that you had to be careful, I told her—”
“Yeah, yeah, I was there. Go tell her again and let me nap.” Alex dragged herself to the couch, sprawled over the cracked green leather, tugging the blanket over herself.
“See if you can find anything else on our mystery man. He had to have come from somewhere. For that matter, the monsters, too. Even if they were living among us, there should have been signs. Why attack now?”
“I don’t know,” Alex muttered.
“Crap,” Sylvie said, glancing at her watch. “Alex, do me a favor? Pick up Zoe at the airport? I have a feeling Lupe’s going to eat time.”
Alex sighed hugely. “So unfair. Come in, tell me to rest up, then give me things to do. I will look into our mystery man. I will pick up your brat of a sister. But after a nap. Go away, before I throw something else at you.”
Sylvie waved off the threat but headed out, right into the full heat of the day.
THE MOTEL LUPE WAS STAYING AT WASN’T IN THE BEST PART OF town; sirens were a familiar background melody, and the palm trees embedded in the sidewalk cutouts were hardly the type to gladden even an indie director’s location scout, being stunted and soft.
But the motel was reasonably cheap, catering to long-term guests, and the neighborhood wasn’t so bad that Lupe couldn’t take her morning runs. There were even coffee shops and restaurants and a movie theater in the area—so why the hell couldn’t Lupe just occupy herself in some safe way?
Sylvie found herself gritting her teeth as she parked her truck, made herself stop. She stepped out of her truck and found her teeth locking tight again as she heard muffled shouting. That was never a good sign. Even in a crap hotel.
Also not good? The fact that Sylvie could feel the tiny flare of unnatural forces rippling in the air, like a storm about to break. Guess Lupe hadn’t waited for Sylvie to approve of the witch but dived in headfirst.
She booked up the stairs, felt the morning’s bruises protest, and pounded on Lupe’s locked door. “Lupe!”
“Help us!” a woman shouted. “Help!”
It wasn’t Lupe. Lupe’s voice had a thick rasp to it, an animal huskiness when she spoke. Sylvie hadn’t asked if the rasp was original or if it, too, was a change forced upon her.
She tested her balance, her aches, then pivoted and kicked the door, with the expected result. She bounced off it. Even cheap motels tended not to skimp on the doors. Easy road to a lawsuit.
“Lupe,” Sylvie said. “Let me in!”
The shouting on the inside broke off to a series of hushed whimpers and a low, feral growl. “Lupe,” Sylvie said. She leaned on the door, slapped her palm against it repeatedly.
“I called the cops,” a voice said. Sylvie jerked, found the day manager staring at her. Truculent, even in the face of her gun. Then again, he probably had one of his own.
“Great. You got a key?”
He stared at her, dark eyes under a crew cut, tattoos running the breadth of his thick neck. “Don’t sue.” He threw her the passkey and stomped back toward his office to wait for the cops.
Sylvie slapped the door again, said, “Lupe, I’m coming in.”
Another whimper, another growl, a groan that was another voice altogether. What the hell was going on? She swiped the card through the reader, shoved the door open, and fell through the door.
Blood on the bed nearest the door. Bright and wet and freshly shed.
Dammit.
A crying woman in a long skirt huddled near the bathroom alcove. At Sylvie’s entrance, she raised her head, eyes flaring wide with alarm. “Behind the door!”
Sylvie caught Lupe’s wrist as the woman lunged—and it was Lupe-the-woman, which Sylvie was grateful for—and used Lupe’s momentum against her, slung her onto the bed, crashing into the headboard. Crystal crunched beneath Sylvie’s feet, cracked quartzite.
Lupe growled, a deep, inhuman rumble in her chest, and Sylvie snapped, “Stay there.”
“She hurt me,” Lupe said.
“It doesn’t look like your blood,” Sylvie said. Her client looked furious, close to insane, her hair a wild tangle, her eyes bloodshot, her hands clawing at the sheets, but she didn’t look hurt.
“It shouldn’t have hurt!” The woman—the witch—by the bathroom shrilled. She had reason to sound scared. It was her blood; the patterned skirt she wore was shredded. Her leg beneath the fabric was streaked and stippled with blood. Claw marks.
“Can you walk?” Sylvie said, cutting over her protests that she’d just been trying to help, that Lupe had gone berserk, that she’d tried to kill her—
“What?”
“Get out of here,” Sylvie said.
“Not without Peter,” the woman protested.
“Peter?” Sylvie echoed, and the low groan rose again. Keeping a careful eye on Lupe in case she freaked out again, Sylvie peered into the only space another person could be in: the gap between the beds.
The shadows separated themselves into a man in dark clothing crunched down into the gap.
“Fine,” Sylvie said. “Get him up, go.”
“But he’s heavy—”
Sylvie lost patience. Sirens scaled through the air, getting closer. She leveled the gun at the witch, and said, “Should I motivate you?”
The woman scrambled to her feet, tripped over the edge of her skirt, gained her feet again, and started dragging her boyfriend out of the room. Sylvie waited until they had cleared the door to slam it closed.
“Get your stuff, Lupe.”
“That bitch tried to do something—” Lupe said.
Sylvie did rapid math in her head. Another minute, maybe two for the cops to reach the motel, two minutes for them to get directions from the day manager, a minute to get their asses up the stairs.
“No time to talk,” Sylvie said. “Move your ass, Lupe, or I’m leaving you here to deal with the police.”
Lupe’s jaw slammed shut; she snatched up her shoes. Sylvie grabbed her duffel bag, grabbed the woman’s arm, and pulled her out the door, nearly tripping over the witch. No sense of self-preservation, Sylvie thought. The witch and her boyfriend should have been long gone; instead, the witch was trying to wake him, while they were still in the danger zone.
Lupe snarled; the woman yelped, and Sylvie jerked hard, her nails digging in to Lupe’s skin. “Ignore her.”
They descended the stairs in a slithering rush, half-falling, half-pulling, and Sylvie slammed Lupe up against the truck. “Get in.”
Sylvie darted around the nose of her truck, got the engine started, and was backing out at speed before Lupe even had the passenger door shut. “You check in under your own name?” Sylvie’s truck was distinctive, but not enough to randomly ID her. Not unless she was really unlucky, and it was a cop she knew.
Lupe’s lips went tight and thin. Answer enough.
Sylvie slued the truck around and headed out of the lot as the cops were pulling in. She waited two heartbeats, three, checking her rearview to see if they were U-turning, then punched the accelerator.
They drove ten miles down the road before Sylvie pulled into a movie theater’s crowded lot, parked her truck in a morass of other vehicles, and got out. She paced a tight circle, swearing, trying to figure the angles. So the cops had Lupe’s name. They didn’t have hers. Sylvie’s truck was distinctive, but there were so many red Ford trucks in the city that the cops would get bored long before they ran down the one with the jagged scars in the hood.<
br />
Unless she was unlucky, and the cops were part of Suarez’s brood. Then they’d know exactly who the truck belonged to.
Fuck.
All right. If that was so, Suarez would come to her first. She could put him off. After all, no one was dead. No one was that badly injured. Sylvie hadn’t committed the crime herself. She could come down hard on “I know nothing. Where’s your warrant?” if she had to.
The witch … Lupe had torn up her leg, and pissing off witches was usually a one-way ticket to a nasty curse. Nastier than what Lupe was already suffering through? Not likely.
Sylvie let her breath out. Okay. She’d need to keep Lupe away from the cops, but that wasn’t impossible. Not even particularly hard. Cash, another hotel, a tiny crime—hardly the kind of thing that would set them on a manhunt.
Annoying and time-consuming for Sylvie, and completely avoidable if Lupe had only listened.
She glared at Lupe through the truck window. Lupe glared right back, serpentine eyes gleaming in the shelter of the truck cab. Lupe didn’t look like she’d learned her lesson. She looked pissed, even put-upon, as she crossed her hands over her chest and revealed that the nails of one hand were stained with blood.
What the hell happened?
When she put the question to Lupe, back in the close confines of the truck, her nerves prickling at the animal scent in the cab, Lupe stiffened in her seat, and said, “That witch fucked me up. Made things worse. She was just supposed to diagnose the curse. She brought it out. I changed, Sylvie. No moon, and I changed. Now it’s right there, under my skin, ready to break free.”
Sylvie tightened her jaw, said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to say immediately that wasn’t an I told you so or If you’d only done as I said, and Lupe was nearly vibrating with tension, one breath from hysteria. “Tell me exactly what the witch did,” Sylvie said, finally.
“What does it matter?” Lupe snapped.
Sylvie couldn’t help but notice that Lupe’s teeth were long and sharp, more than just the canines. Now, she had an entire mouthful of predator’s teeth.
“Humor me,” Sylvie said. “I just saved you from an awkward interview with the cops.”
