Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel

by Lyn Benedict

  It sounded sooner than she’d expected. She rounded her truck’s scarred nose and found Dominick Riordan holding the elevator open for her, spotlighted in the otherwise-dimly-lit garage. A faint smile crossed his patrician face, showing a sliver of polished teeth. “Well, it’s about time. I was beginning to think we were going to have to send up flares.”

  His voice was lovely, mellow and deep. It worked like nails on a chalkboard for Sylvie.

  “I have an office, with office hours,” Sylvie said. “I know you know where it is. You gassed it, robbed it, and wrecked it just three months ago. If you wanted to talk, you knew where to find me.”

  Riordan said, “Your office also has a guard dog of a particular ferociousness, and I’m down men already. Did you bring her with you?”

  “Does it look like I brought anyone in with me? Do you see her sitting in my truck? Or launching herself at your throat?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t. Which is odd to me, Shadows. Here you have this powerful attack dog, and you’re not using her.” He smiled again, a fuller thing that made his eyes bright with pleasure. Made him look like a nice guy. “Which makes me think you can’t use her.”

  “Or maybe I don’t need her for the likes of you. Seems to me your lot is folding all on your own. Mermaids, Riordan? Sand wraiths? Succubi? I don’t need to call on Erinya. You’re fucked.”

  Riordan’s lips flattened, but he wasn’t goaded into temper. That was the problem with him, Sylvie thought. He was always so measured. So damn rational. Usually people shot off their mouths around her, goaded into it by her rudeness, by the desire to prove her wrong. Riordan just observed, calculated, then struck.

  “Tone down your glee,” Riordan said. “You have hostages to fate here, or did you forget who brought you to my door?”

  Sylvie swallowed back her retort, caught by the plural. Hostages. She hadn’t expected a plural. Zoe, yes. Who else?

  Riordan said, “Your sister’s actually been helpful, though I doubt that was her intention. She saw a certain agent in the halls and hailed him by a dead man’s name. Pled with him for help that he’s now in no position to give. Come along, Shadows. Let’s talk.”

  He stepped back from the entry of the elevator, gestured her in. Sylvie saw no option but to follow his lead.

  RIORDAN WASN’T ALONE IN THE ELEVATOR. AS SHE STEPPED IN, THE agent holding the door open released the button and turned his attention to her. “Hand over your weapon,” he said.

  “Think you can make me?” Sylvie asked.

  He took a step toward her, and she took that same step closer to Riordan, a quick two-step made awkward by the close confines of the elevator. Riordan pressed his code into the keypad, selected the top floor.

  “Relax, Powell. Shadows can keep her weapon. She knows to be mindful of what she does with it.”

  “I do?” Sylvie said, as the elevator glided into motion, ticking upward. Too much to hope for that Zoe would be at the top. More likely, she was in one of the holding cells, and Sylvie recalled the chill damp of them, thought they must be pressed up against the parking-garage wall. The elevator was taking her farther away.

  Riordan said, “You’re much less impulsive than your reputation states. You control yourself well enough that your crimes have raised suspicion but nothing approximating proof. Shoot an ISI agent, and you’ll be in jail.”

  “For as long as Erinya left me there. She doesn’t like me in distress. You should have seen her with the mermaids.”

  “I am honestly sorry to have missed it,” Riordan said.

  “Wait,” Sylvie said. “You know about the mermaids?”

  “My son told me about them.”

  “He remembers them?” Sylvie thought back. The other witnesses didn’t. But then, he’d fought off their song also. “That’s right. He’s a witch.”

  “Of course he’s not,” Riordan said. Faint distaste drew his mouth down.

  Before Sylvie could delve deeper, the elevator motor traded its whisper for a sudden whine and grind of machinery. The lights snapped off, plunging them into darkness.

  Sylvie dodged Powell’s inevitable lunge, put her elbow into his ribs, put her gun to his throat, and pushed him back. He went.

  “Shoot her, boss, don’t worry about me,” Powell said, voice strained.

  Riordan sighed. “No one’s shooting anyone. Shadows, you doing this?”

  “Trapped in an elevator doesn’t get me closer to Zoe.”

  “Boss,” Powell said.

  “Shut up, Powell. Listen. We have bigger problems than an unexpected stop.”

  Through the muffling thickness of the elevator doors and shaft, Sylvie heard rapid cracks of gunfire and shouts made distant by architecture. A battle being fought.

  “Shadows, let go of my man and let’s get this door opened.”

  “How about instead of just plain out, we go up and out,” Sylvie said. “Just in case someone’s aiming those guns at the elevator door. Your doors might be bulletproof, I’m not.”

  “My men are in trouble. I don’t want to waste time clambering up a shaft. We’re going through the doors,” Riordan said.

  Even under stress, he sounded calm, in control. Sylvie envied him. She hadn’t felt in control for days. She released Powell. The big man shoved past her to help Riordan pry open the doors. Sylvie leaned against the back wall and tried to stay out of their way.

  The air in the elevator, against the laws of probability, was cooling instead of growing stuffier with three people’s trapped breath and bodily exertion. She fumbled through her pockets, hunting for the tiny penlight she kept on her keychain. She pressed the button down, illuminating the small space before her. Something darkly vaporous jerked back from the light, streamed up into the elevator vent. It looked like smoke, but moved like ink in water, spreading and seeking.

  “What was that?” Powell asked, jerking around in the shift of light and shadow. His eyes were wild. Riordan, Sylvie noticed, was unruffled.

  “Your saboteur,” Sylvie said. “I don’t think it’s human. I think it’s come to finish the job the mermaids started.”

  “Powell, the doors.” Riordan eyed Sylvie in the eerie greenish glow of the penlight, and said, “You ready?”

  “Yeah,” Sylvie said.

  “Don’t shoot my men. Shoot everything else,” Riordan said.

  Powell and he made progress; the elevator doors grumbled but slid apart. “Go,” he told Sylvie.

  Sylvie studied the gap. Definitely wide enough, split by two levels, leaving her with a choice—to enter the upper floor crawling, her gun hand hampered, or to drop an unknown distance into a darkness deep enough that her little penlight couldn’t begin to penetrate it. Neither idea appealed, but she chose to drop. Zoe, after all, was beneath them somewhere.

  She passed Riordan the useless light.

  She braced herself in the width of the space, heard voluptuous movement in the darkness, like velvet rolling over stone, and tightened her grip on her gun. One last breath, and she dropped.

  The floor was farther down than she’d hoped—one of those office buildings that prided itself on high ceilings—and forced a grunt out of her. Her free hand felt damp marble; she smelled fear sweat and blood and bile, and it was cold enough she thought her breath must be clouding the air before her. It made no sense. It was Miami, for God’s sake, and the power was out. The rooms should be gaining heat, not losing it.

  It was the cold of morgues, of underground mausoleums, dank like an abandoned animal’s lair. Empty of everything but death.

  Sylvie’s fingers were sticky, clammy with old blood; she brushed them against her sleeves, felt the contaminant liquefy and seep into the fabric, chilling her. She was the only breathing thing she could hear, her heart a desperate drum looking for an echo. Death rolled over her like a shroud.

  She was alone, and everyone else was dead and gone—rotting—and she was alone. Her breath seized.

  Riordan dropped to the ground beside her, said, “Whe
n you enter a hostile room, clear the area and get out of the way, dammit, do you know nothing?” It was like a wave breaking. An external influence breaking. Her ears popped; the sound of the world returned in a roar of gunfire and Riordan muttering about untrained lone wolves with delusions of competence.

  Even her skin felt dry and warm again, the cold blood only an illusion of some kind. She should have known better.

  “Powell, get down here,” Riordan said.

  Harsh panting was the only answer, and Sylvie turned. Riordan flashed the penlight once, briefly, and Powell jerked. His eyes had iced over, gone cataract white, faintly luminescent in the blackness. He pointed his gun at them, and said, “You’re trying to kill me! It’s a trap, and you want to grind me up in it!”

  Sylvie darted away from the elevator doors, running blind in the darkness, away from Powell’s shooting after them. She heard Riordan keeping pace, a rhythm of footsteps and breath beside her. He veered suddenly, tackled her to the floor.

  She punched him. He reeled, and said, “There’s a staircase, Shadows. You were heading straight for it. Say thank you.”

  “You deserved it anyway,” Sylvie growled. “My sister’s somewhere in this nightmare, isn’t she?”

  “She should be safe,” Riordan said. “Locked up nice and tight. Do you know what we’re dealing with?”

  “Something that’s radiating influence. I think your men are killing each other, losing it like Powell did.”

  “Like you did?” Riordan said.

  Sylvie swallowed, said, “How better to know what’s going on than to let it affect me for a moment?” Sounded good. She wished it were true. “What about you. You going to start shooting at me?”

  Her eyes were finally adjusting to the darkness. She couldn’t see anything much, but she got the sense of shapes, the slightly paler black where the walls were, the endless black gap where the stairs were, the moving darkness where Riordan shifted to a crouch. If she read the space right, they were on a balcony overlooking the lobby below. Stairs ahead. Offices to her left. A glass barrier between her and a long fall. Echoes of gunfire bounced off the ceiling and made it hard to tell if fights were going on above and below or just echoing upward. A sudden draft, a rush of displaced air suggested a body falling from above. The gruesome thud and crunch of that same body hitting the floors below suggested that both directions were treacherous.

  Riordan swore quietly, said, “If I shoot you, Shadows, you can be sure I’ll be doing it of my own will. Not someone else’s.”

  “You’re immune?”

  “I’ve never been one for feeling fear. What are we facing, Shadows?”

  “Headaches and a good possibility of bullet holes? I don’t know. I didn’t know in the elevator, and I don’t know now. I can make some guesses. It’s a monster. It’s not happy.”

  “Can you kill it?”

  Sylvie shivered. Her little dark voice whispered. We can kill anything. “First I have to find it.” That wouldn’t be hard, really. The monster would be ground zero, the only calm place in the midst of chaos, spreading its influence—those inky tendrils—wider and wider. “It’d be easier if there were lights. I thought you agency types were big on emergency power supplies.”

  “We are,” Riordan said. “But our generators are inside the building. Vulnerable to bullets, or men under the influence.”

  “Okay. Two questions. How many men do you have left?”

  “None of your business.”

  “If I have to fight my way through them, it is. I’m not bulletproof.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “It bears repeating.” It was comforting in a panic-inducing sort of way. She might be immortal, but she was still human.

  “More men than you’d like,” Riordan said. “We were transitioning from the hotel to this building after the earlier attacks on the other ISI branches, trying to minimize civilian risk.”

  “Good job, then,” Sylvie said. “Too little, too late.”

  “This is hardly the time to assign blame,” Riordan said. “Would you prefer to argue or survive?”

  Sylvie hated to admit it, but he was right. “Fine. Second question. Flashlights?”

  He passed her back the penlight, and she said, “That’s not gonna cut it. I need to see what I’m walking into.”

  “Demanding,” he said. “Wait here.”

  “Get two if you can.”

  He shifted around her, made her realize that their drop-and-hide spot was more sheltered than she’d thought—she reached back, felt a jut in the wall. An alcove looking over the lobby. If this were a real office building, it would probably have held a water fountain.

  She had time to think. Time to kill. She laughed, soundlessly, a little closer to hysteria than she’d admit. Hunting monsters in the dark to save her sister, and God, Demalion—where was he in all this? Locked up tight with Zoe? Safe? Or roaming the halls, shooting at everything he could. If Demalion was out there, prone to the same panic that Powell had fallen prey to, he’d be lethal. Paranoia plus psychic abilities? Ugly.

  She wished she knew what she was dealing with. It wasn’t a succubus. Wasn’t anything attached to elements: no sand wraiths, no mermaids, no fiery salamanders, and, despite the smoky tentacles in the air, she didn’t think it was any type of air elemental.

  It wasn’t a succubus, but it was something that worked on a similar principle. Used the body to overwhelm the brain. Whatever this was spread panic and paranoia as easily as a succubus spread lust and hunger.

  Movement near her, and she turned, a “Took your time” on her lips. It wasn’t Riordan. She caught the faint glimmer of eyes with an icy shine and held her breath. The tainted agent went past, limping, his breath wheezing and whispering out insanity. Not my teeth. Can’t take them. Not for you. Kill you first.

  Sylvie wiped her face. This was all a little too zombie apocalypse for her. She wondered if Zoe was terrified, pissed, or trying to work magic. She wondered if Zoe was still alive.

  Riordan returned, passed her a flashlight, kept his hand over the switch, and said, “Don’t turn it on yet.”

  “Not stupid,” Sylvie murmured. “You get one for yourself?”

  “I did.”

  “Good. While I’m hunting monsters? You’re going to fix the damn generator.”

  7

  Bureaucracy & Other Monsters

  ONCE RIORDAN LEFT HER SIDE—A BRUSH OF DARKNESS, HIS FOOTSTEPS fading, his warmth receding—and Sylvie was certain that she was the only living thing in close proximity, she hit the switch of the heavy Maglite. The beam shot out like a laser; dark, vaporous tendrils scattered beneath it, left roiling crimson ghosts behind. Sylvie swept the light across in precise arcs, illuminating the space around her, the stairs ahead of her—pale marble streaked with blood—a bulky shadow of a dead man on the first landing, two more on the landing below that, but overall, a clear enough path for her to tread. She raised the light higher—swept out across the lobby, dispelling darkness, swept the light across, down, over, and around, trying to memorize everything in a second’s worth of illumination.

  Then she flicked the light off, traded positions for another sheltering alcove, this one in the doorway of an empty office. Once certain she had a moment, she closed her eyes and played it all back.

  The lobby proved that the building had been designed to throw off any casual looky-loos who might suspect the bank was more than it seemed. The lobby was a classic bank lobby, a central atrium stretching up all four floors, the walls and floors a symphony of dark marble, pale inlaid wood, and polished brass and glass. Around the core, offices and hallways branched off, dark arteries that she diagnosed by their stubborn refusal to reflect light, and by the echoes of gunfire coming from them. Everyone in the atrium was dead.

  Not everyone, her little dark voice reminded her.

  Everyone, Sylvie insisted. The only thing standing down there wasn’t a person.

  No matter what it looked like—a woman in a dark dr
ess standing dead center in the atrium, surrounded by bodies, uncaring of the continuing gunfire, the shouting, or the blood wicking up her skirt—three floors below, stood a monster.

  Something horribly, terribly unnatural that was mimicking a human form. Just recalling her made Sylvie’s heart stutter a beat.

  Nightmares, her little dark voice said.

  Her skin, her hair, her clothes were the void of a starless night; her face seemed featureless but for the gloss of eye shine, the sudden shocking scarlet of a tongue that had swept across her lips. That icy vapor swirled around her, waiting her commands. No, she was the vapor, a constant release and collection that blurred the lines of her being. Around her, agents died, and the perfect void of her face held a smile.

  And somewhere down there, Zoe and Demalion.

  Riordan was a bastard, but he’d reacted to this disaster as neatly as if he’d planned for it. She had her gun, a light, a motive to go down and solve his problem for him. To kill the monster between her and her sister. To save his wretched agency. Again.

  All she had to do was kill the monster before the remaining agents, maddened by the monster’s presence, found her and added her blood to the scarlet slicks already greasing the floors.

  Sylvie clutched the flashlight—the vapor pulled back from the light, that was something—and her gun. Anticipating trouble below, she was caught by surprise by the agent who loomed out of nowhere right next to her, his eyes frosted over, gleaming in the dark, his breathing harsh and giving way into manic babble. I’m falling. I’m falling. You pushed me. Falling.

  She slashed the flashlight beam across his face, and he didn’t even flinch, blind to the real world, blind to the darkness around him. On his eyes, the frost crackled, and he leaped at her. She reversed the flashlight, caught him solidly in the head, and he dropped.

  “Didn’t shoot him,” she muttered. “Hope you’re happy, Riordan.”

  The stairs beckoned, and she started down them, the temperature plummeting with every step she took, raising goose bumps on her flesh.