Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel

by Lyn Benedict

  The shed, when explored, yielded another door and beyond it a steep downward ramp, leading beneath the B&B main building.

  Sylvie blew out her breath. Luck, both good and bad. Since the Good Sisters had set up shop underground, the intervening earth had muffled their ingress. Once Sylvie’s group was inside, that same earth would prevent anyone from hearing what happened to them if it all went wrong.

  “Watch your backs down there,” Sylvie said. “One way in probably means one way out. Lupe, stick with Zoe. And for God’s sake, use your sense of smell. If you can’t smell the monster, don’t attack it.”

  “You shot, too,” Lupe growled. The words were thick in her inhuman throat.

  “Well,” Sylvie said, “better safe than sorry. And I don’t have your senses. Some of these witches leash monsters, remember. Stick close to Zoe.”

  She shot another thought Zoe’s way, the warning that Lupe might turn on them and Zoe would need to be prepared and could she be prepared to take someone like Lupe down?

  Zoe nodded once.

  Sylvie thought maybe this mind reading wasn’t such bad idea after all, and turned her back on Zoe’s smirk. The ramp was stone on all sides, floor, walls, ceilings, lit every few feet by prosaic LED adhesive lights, battery powered. The stone was smooth beneath her shoes, worn down with age. The main building was at least a hundred years old, but the tunnel was older still.

  Zoe pointed at a worn symbol chipped into the wall, blurred with age and erosion. A pentagram. “Sylvie. Think they were here first?”

  Sylvie ran her fingers over it, and said, “I think it wouldn’t surprise me at all. The Good Sisters obviously believe in the long game, or they wouldn’t have bothered infiltrating the ISI.”

  The tunnel lightened ahead. Sylvie estimated they were about thirty feet below the surface and about fifty feet in. The underdwelling, whatever it would prove to be, was more than a simple cellar to the hotel above.

  Animal instinct made her want to walk faster, to reach the light sooner, to step out of the dank stone tunnel. But something about the quality of the light ahead, the faint shift and flicker of it, made her heart beat faster.

  She held up a hand, pausing them.

  “They’re waiting for us.”

  That was what the shift and flicker was—people between them and the light, trying to remain still. Failing.

  “An ambush?”

  “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. S
he 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 door rocked on its hinges, but then Sylvie heard the witch shout, saw the quick, poisonous shine of Lupe’s claw tips as they penetrated the wood, blood tipped.

  Sylvie backed away, studied her surroundings. Where the first room had been an antechamber—bare stone floor and walls, a few punitive bench chairs—this one was more obviously used. The stone floor had been overlaid with glossy marble that shone like malachite, and dark, heavy, sound-muffling curtains lined the walls. Still, someone should have heard the shots.

  Sylvie grabbed the first curtain to hand, yanked it back, and found herself in the coven’s workroom. Silver and gold lines etched a pentagram into the floor, the lines dulled by years of footsteps.

  But no one around. No Yvette. No Demalion. No caged monsters waiting for their cue. No memory spell. The room was cold, and the only magic left in it was residual, as subtle as a sheen of oil.

  The curtain along the wall swayed. She skirted the pentagram, thought maybe the reason no one had come to fight her was simply that they’d left her a trap to walk into.

  Vaporous wisps rose from the pentagram as she passed, licking at her ankles. Sylvie stepped away from them and found herself suddenly fighting the curtains themselves.

  Effective, she thought. Stupidly so. Nothing to shoot, no one to fight, difficult to breathe as the fabric did its best to pour itself down her throat. When she tried to tear the fabric, it gave beneath her nails like water and re-formed around her wrists.

  But the curtains were mindless, and she was too damn stubborn to lose to home furnishings. She fought steadily, sank lower and lower until she was slipping free of their grasp. The curtains went limp, motionless once again, and left her where she’d started. She needed to find Demalion.

  Priorities, her little dark voice suggested. Kill the witches; stop the spell. Then, worry about rescue.

  It wasn’t the worst advice the voice had ever given her. But the thing was, the bigger the witch, the bigger the spell that broke, the worse the fallout. In this enclosed area, Sylvie had concerns that the minute Yvette went down, so would the whole structure. She wasn’t going to have time to search for him, after.

  You just want your lover back, her dark voice growled.

  Sylvie refused to engage it. Mostly because, as usual, it was telling the truth.

  More silvery wisps rose from the pentagram, and Sylvie bent down and smashed the corner of the star with her gun butt. The metal inlay dented. She pried at it, yanked a brittle segment of old brass out of the floor, and turned to the next curtain. She used the metal to pry back an edge of the curtain. Without human touch, it behaved like normal fabric and gave her a glimpse of three open doorways down a dark hall. It reminded her of monastery cells and gave her yet another glimpse of the fanaticism that drove the Society.

  She peeled back the next curtain, found another four cell doors, closed this time, and, more to the point, three witches guarding the cells. They looked up as Sylvie slithered through the curtain gap. The room, like all the others she’d been through, was dimly lit, but she found two men and one women waiting. The leader of this small crew snarled her name, “Shadows.”

  She knew him. Dennis Kent. That slate grey hair and roman nose were memorable. She’d last seen him laid out by one of Tierney Wales’s soul-biting ghosts. Had thought him a typical ISI agent. She should have let Wales’s ghost eat his fill.

  Before she could take a shot at him, he held up the amulet around his neck, and said, “I wouldn’t. We’re all wearing talismans. And the only vulnerable people around are your friends. You try to shoot us, your bullets will probably hit them instead.”

  “Didn’t help the bitch at the front door,” Sylvie said, had the satisfaction of seeing shock cross his face.

  “What?” she added. “Did you think she just let me pass? Or that I patted her on the head and sent her home? We’re past that. We’ve been past that since your lot started deciding what the rest of the world was allowed to know or remember. It’s you or me.”

  “You,” he said. The first two cell doors opened and birthed snarling wolves. Werewolves by their size. Sylvie took a steadying breath, looked past the wolves’ bristling fur, into the room behind them. She didn’t even need the Lilith voice’s assessment.

  She laughed and lowered her gun, and when the wolves charged her, whining and snarling, claws scratching the stone floor, she let them brush into her, through her, and disappear. “My baby sister casts better illusions than that, Kent.” Two pissed-off, slavering werewolves and the room behind them was neat as a pin?

  While he gaped, and the witches behind him held a hasty spell consultation, Sylvie ran forward. The floor here was the same malachite-shaded marble. And it let her drop and slide into him as solidly as she had ever managed while playing high-school baseball. She seized the talisman around his throat and yanked. Wouldn’t hurt him, but it jerked him around, let her use him as her own shield. She kicked out at the other two witches, disrupting their spell casting, tangling her legs in theirs.

  Dangerous, her voice shouted, ringing in her ears.

  Dogpiled with three witches who were wearing invulnerability talismans and wanted to kill her? Yeah, thanks, she knew. If her voice didn’t have useful suggestions, it could shut the hell up.

  She tangled them all closer; the spells warred and sparked. The remaining locked door shuddered in its frame, and Sylvie turned her head to bite down hard on Kent’s throat. Couldn’t hurt him, but people had atavistic reactions hardwired. He flinched, ducked his head, trying to get her off his throat, pulled away. Perfect setup. She yanked the talisman’s cord over his head, got her gun up, and shot him in the soft underside of his jaw.

  She deafene
d herself, stunned herself with the concussion of it, but managed to cling tight to both the talisman and her gun. Another distant crack sounded; she rolled to her feet, staggering, preparing for illusion or magic or—

  Marah Stone, furious, diving directly for the witch nearest her. She got her Cain-marked hand around the woman’s throat and squeezed. The marks on her hand seemed to pulse with the woman’s labored breaths.

  Invulnerability talisman or not, the woman choked.

  Marah was another of God’s killers, Sylvie thought, swaying. Blood scent burned thickly in her nose, rested heavy on her hair and skin.

  The remaining witch dithered between Sylvie and helping his partner, and Sylvie made the decision for him. She shoved him hard, pushed him off balance, pushed him right into Demalion’s waiting arms.

  Demalion skinned his hand down the man’s neck, yanked up, and pulled out another talisman, the twin to the one Sylvie had removed from Kent. “Always had to ape Kent. See what it gets you, O’Neal?” Before the man could mouth a single spell, Demalion broke his neck.

  Sylvie had a sudden and unwelcome flashback. The last time Demalion had broken a man’s neck for her, he’d died half a second later.

  This time, he merely let the body drop. “Sylvie.”

  “Good timing,” she said. She couldn’t stop her gaze from lasering up and down his body, looking for injury.

  “Saw you playing Twister with Kent’s crew and thought you’d appreciate a hand.”

  “Another point for precognitive skills,” she said. “Remind me to send your mother a thank-you note. Not to sound ungrateful, because I’m thrilled, relieved, blissfully happy, all those things, but why the hell aren’t you dead?”

  Demalion flashed a smug grin. “Well. Marah told Yvette she’d join her if the price was right, so they locked her up until they had time to haggle.”

  Marah said, “She can’t afford me, but I was curious.”