Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel

by Lyn Benedict

  Erinya hadn’t made the leap off the island.

  “She’s trapped,” Zoe said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think she can leave the island. There’s something shielding it.”

  “That would be me,” Dunne said. He settled on the waves before Sylvie, cross-legged, jeans staying dry despite the wave roll. “Your cage? Does it meet with your approval? It’s temporary. I can get away with it for only a while. Call it a practical joke between old friends.”

  “Yeah,” Sylvie said. “It does. Did you leave Alex on the inside? ’Cause Erinya’s going to be furious.”

  “Eros sent her home.”

  Lupe shot Sylvie a betrayed glance, and Sylvie ignored it. “Can you send us to San Francisco?”

  Dunne flashed inhuman, a great grey swirl of wind and storm, and the water around them grew jagged and as rough as sharks’ teeth. Sylvie wished she hadn’t thought about sharks. Or, God, mermaids. “You’re asking for a lot of favors for a woman who’s not even marked as mine.”

  “Sorry. My soul is my own.”

  Zoe shivered, said, “Look, I get that Sylvie’s difficult, but we’re wet and going to get tired of treading water and we really need your help. So if you want us to grovel… she grimaced. “Okay, we won’t. But I’ll say please?”

  “Oh, God,” Dunne said, and it was so strange to hear that word out of his mouth that Sylvie forgot to tread water. A slap of salty water going into her lungs reminded her. She surfaced in time to hear the rest of it. “… just like your sister, aren’t you? Fine. Go. Kill witches. I’m through with you.”

  The water rose up around them like a waterspout, then it wasn’t water at all. Sylvie had time to think she’d really angered him—this ride was rougher even than Erinya’s, a far cry from the hiccup when he’d sent her to Dallas—before she lost any thought beyond trying to hold on to her allies. The hardest thing to believe was that she’d volunteered for this. The travel wasn’t instantaneous; it felt endless. Cold and stormy, roiling with momentum and power. It scoured as it shoved them before it, left them blind. She gritted her teeth, determined to endure.

  Zoe screamed suddenly, sharp and as brilliant as a stroke of lightning. A moment later, the storm around them eased a notch. As if the power was flowing into something else. As if it were burning through a witch. Sylvie shouted and cursed and flailed and made no headway against the power inexorably rolling them onward. Killing her sister.

  They dropped hard, and Lupe snarled furiously, snapping out at everything around her—no humanity in her. Sylvie dodged her and scanned the area, taking it in, in frantic Zoe-absent chunks: nighttime sea falling away blackly and steeply to her left. Sand and stone beneath her, roughing up her skin beneath her khakis. The dark tangle that was Lupe in the night. And, finally, a white glimmer that turned out to be Zoe’s blouse. Her sister was hunched tight in the shelter of a massive rock.

  Sylvie scrambled to her feet, fell, scrambled up again.

  This, her Lilith voice said, is why you don’t involve family. And why you don’t rely on witches. They’re both too fragile for the job.

  “Fuck off,” Zoe said, turning to glare at Sylvie. “You know you’ve got a rude-ass voice in your head?”

  “Uh—” Sylvie stopped.

  Zoe wasn’t dead, hurt, or even burned out. Power was crackling off of her, rolling around and around the Cain mark on her forearm and hand. When Sylvie reached out cautiously, actual sparks launched in her direction. She withdrew her hand fast.

  Zoe admired the silvery, stormy halo flowing over her arm, watched that stolen power spill back and forth as she tilted her arm. It lit up the dark night like she had wrapped moonlight around her skin.

  “Guess this mark is good for something. Dunne’s power should have overwhelmed me, fried me. Hell, I probably could have taken on Erinya.”

  “Don’t get cocky. She would have chewed out your throat. Just be glad it saved your life,” Sylvie said. She studied their environment with a less panicked and more analytical gaze. “I think it also got us dropped too early. Dunne’s precise with power expenditure. No more, no less than is needed. Part of his no-carbon-footprint god style.”

  “Well, crap,” Zoe said. “I’m really ready to take on those Society bitches.” Her lips were curling into a hungry smile. “I’ve been studying and studying and studying, and now I’ve got a chance to—”

  You’re going to have to watch her, her little voice suggested. She’s corrupted from that much power.

  She’s high, Sylvie countered.

  “Shut up!” Zoe snapped. “I am not corrupted. I am not high. I am energized. I am in control. Perfect control.”

  “You’re reading my mind.”

  “Yeah. A spell I always wanted to try.”

  “And you tried it now? Are you going to do anything useful with it or just going to pick fights with my brain?”

  “Lupe’s eating a seagull,” Zoe said. “Worry about how useful she’s going to be.”

  “What?” Lupe said, looming out of the dark on three legs at the sound of her name, the mangled bird dangling from her right front claws. “Where are we?”

  “San Francisco,” Sylvie said. If Zoe had sucked in enough of Dunne’s power that he’d dropped them in the wrong city, she’d be more than … energized; she’d be a glowing trail of embers across the sky, mark of Cain or no.

  “We’ve got to be close,” Zoe said. She waved her glowing hand before her as if it could illuminate their path.

  “There’s nothing around us,” Lupe said. Her nose wrinkled; her tongue flicked out, tasted the air.

  “What, just because you can’t smell it? Witches wash, you know,” Zoe said.

  Sylvie left them bickering and started walking. She had her gun; the bullets had made the trip safely with her. Her sister had made the trip. Lupe had made the trip, and, despite Sylvie pulling a fast one on Erinya, she seemed willing to fight at Sylvie’s side. All systems were go, and Demalion was waiting for his rescue.

  The ground sloped away from her feet, made each step forward an experiment in faith and discomfort. Each step jarred, and the rocky substrate shifted. But the sea cliff was at her back, and there was a hint of asphalt in the darkness. A minute’s walk revealed the slash of car headlights passing by and, a minute after that, the long black ribbon of a California highway slipping downhill.

  Zoe joined her, not slip-sliding on the rough terrain at all courtesy of her own glow. Lupe followed in her wake.

  “Now what,” Lupe said. “Do we even have an idea of where we’re going? Are all your cases this slipshod? How do you get anything done?” That angry edge was vibrating in her voice again. Erinya’s presence had tamed it somewhat. Sylvie couldn’t wait to find a witch to point Lupe’s bad temper at.

  “I admit I’ve been slow about this,” Sylvie said. “The Good Sisters have infiltrated the ISI. San Francisco’s an ISI city. I am betting that we’ll find the entire coven tucked up at ISI home base.” She should have realized it was likely the moment Yvette took Marah and Demalion; they’d need a place to stash them—and the ISI buildings were all equipped with holding cells. Plus, she should have recognized the classic witchy arrogance. That a group of witches who had infiltrated the ISI easily and thoroughly would deepen the insult by running the spell that allowed them to expand their power out of the ISI bastion.

  The irritation of knowing she’d been stupid itched beneath her skin. She could have gone directly from Dallas, attacked them on her own. She could handle a group of witches; she’d tackled gods.

  “Going it alone would have been stupid,” Zoe said. “You don’t even know how many of them are there. That’s not even counting the monsters they might be controlling.”

  Sylvie gritted her teeth. “Undo that mind-reading spell. Now.”

  “No,” Zoe said. “It wasn’t a whim, Syl. We’re about to head into enemy territory. This way, I can keep up with you. Even if we get separated.”

  Sylvie couldn’t argue with that.
That was sound planning.

  Zoe grinned, said, “You’re going to find out I’m all sorts of useful.” After picking up a scrap of broken wood and two small stones, Zoe stepped onto the empty roadway. She laid down the stones, laid the scrap across them, and whispered, “Catch and hold.”

  A wash of silvery light, the burning itch of magic, and the road was suddenly barricaded with a police-grade roadblock. Zoe sauntered back and said, “Next car that stops, we take.”

  Sylvie wanted to disapprove. Her parents would want her to disapprove—carjacking was not a skill set her family aspired to—but looking at her sister, at Lupe lurking slick and deadly in the shadows, she couldn’t feel anything but pleased.

  IT TOOK SYLVIE AN HOUR TO TRACK DOWN THE ISI BUILDING IN San Francisco, and it was an enormously long hour. Zoe and Lupe, in combination, made hellish car companions, especially when the car that Zoe had liberated from a spell-stunned driver was small enough that Lupe and Zoe, divided by front and back seat, were still in constant physical contact, a fact that pleased neither of them.

  As Zoe said, sliding into Lupe’s outspread tail when Sylvie took a curve more quickly than the car was really capable of, “Erinya’s going to be pissed enough that she’s trapped. I don’t need Lupe going back smelling like I’ve been rubbing up against her all night long.”

  Sylvie wanted to snap at them to shut the hell up, to just stop, to impress upon them how serious this whole matter was, but Zoe had to know. She was jacked in to Sylvie’s brain after all. Knew the constant flashes of terror that she was suffering—not for herself, but for Alex, for Demalion. What if she wasn’t fast enough, good enough? What if Demalion was already dead? The ISI seemed to have nothing on the Society of the Good Sisters when it came to magical experimentation. Demalion, having died once, was a curiosity they’d be dying to take apart.

  If they had—

  Sylvie pulled the car to a graceless halt streetside; the engine cooled and pinged, way overdue for an oil change. Or a new engine. Zoe had stolen a lemon.

  But it had brought them here.

  The San Francisco ISI building, unlike many of their other branches, was isolated, an entity in itself. That was a plus. It meant the only people she had to worry about were her own. No close bystanders. There were shops on the other side of the road, closed at this hour. A few houses, owned by people rich enough to afford sizable plots of land in California.

  An iron gate barricaded the oyster-shell drive, which led to a dimly lit building backed up against the jagged coastline. The sea was a constant growl, unseen but threatening. Helpful, too. The crash it made as it hit the rocky shore would mask their approach.

  Zoe said, “The gate’s not spelled.”

  “Wouldn’t be,” Sylvie said, giving it a good shove. “Not if this hosts real ISI agents as well. With non-Talents coming in and out.” The metal screeched, salt air eating away at the hinges.

  Lupe slipped through the gap, darted toward the building, pulled up short, wincing. Oyster-shell drive, Sylvie thought. Sharp-edged, uncomfortable to walk on even in her boots. Lupe’s bare footpads were going to slow her down.

  This branch occupied a turn-of-the-century bed-and-breakfast, and it still looked more like a hotel than a government facility: The stone facade was ivy covered, the grounds were manicured and landscaped with flowering bushes that perfumed the night. The only thing that gave them away was the dull shine of replacement windows—bulletproof. Dark, angular blotches studded the roofline, and Sylvie thought they were security cameras. Inactive ones: no movement, no light.

  The Good Sisters wanted privacy.

  Worked for her.

  “One entrance,” Zoe said. “You think there’s a back door?”

  “Depends on whether the ISI has to abide by fire codes,” Sylvie said. “But I was thinking more about hitting them head-on.”

  Unlike Demalion, who would have been muttering about stealth and discretion, Zoe and Lupe merely nodded, trusting her.

  Sylvie checked the solid weight of her weapon, reassured herself that the spare ammo was still in her pockets, and moved up the drive, sticking to the shadows. They were nearly on the house when the tiny stone shed leaning up against the side of the building cracked open, sprouting a door where none had been.

  Three people walked out into the predawn light, talking quietly among themselves. Lupe snarled in animal surprise, and the agents looked up and out and spotted them. The lead agent—witch—gestured at the gravel pathway, shouted out a harsh-edged word. The ground before him roiled, rolled up into the world’s largest mole trail, then erupted. A monster shook dirt and sharp shells from its back and blocked their path.

  Sylvie shot once at it, wondering what exactly it was that this witch had had leashed and following him beneath the ground’s surface, and where the hell its weak point was. First glance argued that there weren’t any: It was all scale and scute and armored legs. Her bullet spanged off it with a sound like breaking pottery.

  She wasn’t even sure it had eyes. She lined up another shot, but Lupe beat her to it, lunging into her line of fire and engaging the monster directly.

  Eager, but reckless.

  The monster, something even Sylvie’s Lilith voice struggled to name, moved like a centipede, hundreds of jointed, armored legs, and evil pincers at the head. A long, stinging tail curved above its back. It raised all the hairs on her neck, made her stomach squirm in ingrained squeamishness. She really wasn’t wild about insects. Especially when this one might as well have been designed out of an insectophobe’s nightmare.

  Though it seemed blind, or, at least, eyeless, it moved confidently enough to get Lupe on the defensive and keep her there. Lupe whimpered after one stinger strike; her side ran blood. She fell back.

  Sylvie jerked the trigger, put another two bullets into the creature, trying to maim its front pair of legs and failing, trying to keep an eye on the witches as well. Be stupid to be killed by them while focusing on a monster.

  The monster ignored Sylvie, oiling back on itself to make another attack on Lupe.

  Take out the witch that controls it; free the monster, the Lilith voice suggested, guided her gun hand ’round to the man who had summoned the monster out of the earth. His mouth was a black slash in his neat beard, urging the monster on.

  Free the monster, and who’s to say it’ll run? It might want to finish what it started, Sylvie thought, but shooting a witch was well within her plans. The witch, sensing his danger, pressed back toward the shed and shelter.

  Zoe stepped between the monster and Lupe just as it charged again and slapped it hard right in its blind face. Zoe’s entire body was within the cutting grasp of the pincers.

  Sylvie unloaded bullets into the monster’s tail end, trying to get it to turn, to forget her suicidal sister. But the monster was dissolving, starting from Zoe’s slap mark and crumbling back into gravel and dust.

  “Illusion,” Zoe said. “Good one, though. Lupe. Stop believing you’re hurt.”

  “Cassavetes’s protégé,” the illusion master said. His tone was dismissive. “You’re an acolyte. Nothing more. Your creature illusion is unconvincing. No chimera looks like that.”

  “I’m a lot more than an acolyte, and Lupe’s not an illusion,” Zoe said. She raised her marked hand, started chanting. Dunne’s stolen powers shone silver, highlighting the mark.

  Sylvie, exasperated, desperate—they had to be attracting attention they didn’t want yet—took advantage of the witch’s arrogance. He’d stepped out of his shelter, all his focus on Zoe.

  Sylvie’s bullet made a hole through his throat; the witch managed to clutch at the wound, but nothing more, before he crumpled and died.

  Zoe snarled, balked of an audience, and Sylvie thought Get the door! in her direction. The two witches remaining were doing their best to seal it. Lupe staggered to her feet and pounced on one of them, proving that she was no illusion. The witch, a woman whose hair was nearly as scarlet as her life’s blood, managed to look
betrayed as she died.

  Zoe and the remaining witch played magical tug-of-war over the door until Sylvie unloaded one more bullet, this one into the last witch’s head. The bullet shivered, pushing through a magical shield, before it penetrated. Sylvie wiped sweat off her face with her gun hand, smelled hot metal, thanked their lucky stars that these witches weren’t carrying invulnerability talismans. Just the lesser, rudimentary spell shields. If they’d been wearing talismans, she’d have had to tackle them physically first, get the talismans off, get up close and personal with her kills.

  Sylvie leaned forward, breathing hard. There was killing witches; and then there was killing people in front of her baby sister. It didn’t make it better that Zoe seemed completely okay with it, was even now pushing past to grab hold of the closing door.

  “C’mon, Sylvie. This damned door isn’t happy. It knows I’m not one of them, and it’s trying to close.”

  Sylvie looked across at the main building, looked past the shed door, and had a feeling that they could raid the main ISI building for days and find nothing but patsies. The Good Sisters had leeched on and hidden themselves, parasites who made the host forget they were there.

  Lupe pressed up against Sylvie’s side, her flanks wet with blood, but no wounds. Either she believed Zoe enough to erase the injury if not the signs of it, or Erinya had souped her up before the battle with some quick-healing genes. Good, Sylvie thought. She needed her team whole.

  “Let’s go,” Sylvie said, and ignored Zoe’s muttered, “Finally!” as she squeezed into the shed. She felt the quiver of angry magic as she passed. Zoe winced; her grip tightened on the door edge. It moaned like a living thing beneath her hands. Sylvie thought it said a lot about the Good Sisters that even a spell as simple as a hidden door felt malevolent.

  “Lupe, come on!”

  Lupe was longer than the shed was, and her tail took forever to tuck in; her fur smoked as she brushed the shimmering, twisting door frame. The moment Zoe released the door, it slammed shut and left them in darkness.