by Lyn Benedict
“As for me…
“Yvette thinks if she kills him, he’ll just change bodies, again,” Marah put in. She was searching the witch’s clothes, stripping her of anything that might be useful. Small charms, a knife, a .22 that Marah sneered at but pocketed anyway.
“I freak Yvette out,” Demalion said. “She’s scared that if I get killed, I’ll take over one of her men, and she won’t know which one.”
“Wonder how she got that impression,” Marah said. Her grin wasn’t nice at all.
“Paranoia working for us,” Sylvie said. “Doesn’t happen nearly enough.”
“Is it paranoia?” Marah asked. “I bet he could do it.”
Demalion said, “I’d rather not test the theory.”
“Yeah, let’s not,” Sylvie said. “I’ve just gotten used to you as a blond.”
A muffled concussion vibrated through the stone. Hard to tell directionality when it was beneath her feet, but Sylvie knew.
“Zoe—Oh hell, I left them fighting witches. They’re outnumbered.”
“In the antechamber?” Marah said. She pulled the witch’s talisman off the body, held it up before her, spinning at the end of its cord. The talisman, an etched, wooden scapular, looked burned. Marah’s handprint discolored the lines of spellcraft on it. Marah closed her fingers, and the wood crumbled. “Give me Kent’s, Sylvie. You don’t need it. Your sister might.”
Sylvie passed it over without hesitation, blood-spotted and sticky as it was.
“For Lupe, then,” Demalion said, handing Marah O’Neal’s talisman. “Did you see Yvette, Syl?”
“Every other witch in the world, seems like. But not her.”
“Two covens’ worth,” Demalion said. “There was one maintained here, when we were brought in. And Yvette brought her own. Well, most of her own. You killed five at Dallas.”
“Killed Merrow, too,” Sylvie said. “Shit. We’re missing at least four. And however many monsters they can control.”
“So what,” Marah said. “You shoot them. They die.” She tucked both talismans into her jacket pocket.
“You make it sound easy,” Sylvie rasped. Her throat was dry. She wanted a glass of water. Fighting was thirsty work. “Some things are immune to bullets. Yvette’s not likely to let me get close enough to yank off her talisman, and you can’t tell me she’s not wearing one.”
Marah lunged forward, shoved Sylvie against the doorjamb, and said, “You still don’t get it, do you? It’s not your bullets that do the job. It’s you, pulling the trigger. You kill things that can’t be killed by regular means. And you do it with a gun. Because you like guns. You kill things. That’s who you are. The gun is irrelevant. You’re the weapon.”
“Weirdest pep talk ever,” Sylvie said. Her heart thudded. The little dark voice crowed, Yes, yes, yes.
The ground vibrated again, arguing that whether Zoe was behind the mini-earthquakes or not, she was still fighting.
Demalion stepped closer to the curtain, and Sylvie winced, hissed his name in warning. He shook his head. “Spell’s one-way.”
“You know this place?”
“Guards talk,” he said. He peered through the curtain, let it drop. “Still empty.”
A third, sharper force vibrated through the room, this time shaking the doors in their frames. She took a step back the way she’d come. Zoe …
“Don’t be stupid,” Marah said. “You don’t have time. You’ve got to stop Yvette.”
“Why can’t you do it? I’ve let you out of your cell,” Sylvie said.
Marah said. “The thing about being a government assassin—you know when to leave the work to the specialists. In this case, that’s you. You take care of Yvette and her little memory-modification business. I’ll take care of your sister, your monster, and watching your back.”
“Awfully generous of you,” Sylvie said. Her neck was going to be sore from the quick glances she was casting around. Checking to see that the witches stayed dead, checking the curtain, checking the doorway that Yvette had to have gone through. Checking to make sure Demalion was at her side, still living.
“Don’t worry. I’m running a tab. When all this is done, I’m going to ask you for a favor. And you’re going to give it to me.” Marah licked her lips. “You have a spare gun? A .22’s not much unless you’re right up close. I’d like to avoid that until the numbers are better.”
“Witch at the curtain edge of the pentagram dropped his.”
Marah nodded, started to move. Sylvie caught her arm. “Marah. Nothing happens to Zoe.”
“You brought her here,” Marah said, slipped free, ducked through the curtains, taking both invulnerability talismans with her. Sylvie hoped they went to Lupe and Zoe. Hoped she hadn’t made a mistake. Hoped Marah really did have her sister in mind.
“How much of Marah’s decision to help Zoe is her just wanting to be closer to the exit?”
Demalion grimaced. “Seventy-five percent, at least. She’s got big plans, Syl. She needs to stay alive to implement them. But you’re a part of those plans. She wants you to owe her. Zoe alive will do that.”
“Not reassuring,” Sylvie said. She looked at the last door, the last step into the spider’s parlor. “Yvette’s waiting for us, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s not disappoint her.” Sylvie checked her ammunition compulsively, the good, solid weight of the gun in her hand.
She turned, looked at Demalion’s empty hands, and said, “You’re not armed.”
“Not yet,” Demalion said. “Give me five minutes.”
Precognitive. Right.
Sylvie took a breath and moved toward that final door—a thick, iron-banded door in a stone arch. It looked like the entry to a dungeon. Demalion caught her arm. “Wait.”
She turned to look at him, scowling. “We don’t have a lot of time—”
He kissed her. Chaste but heartfelt. “We have the worst dates ever,” he murmured against her mouth. “Killing witches really isn’t that much fun.”
“Dinner and dancing afterward,” she said.
“Promise?”
She kissed him again, let her breath linger with his, warmth in the midst of this chilly underground lair. “Yeah. No matter what body you end up in.”
17
A Fight to Remember
AS SYLVIE AND DEMALION APPROACHED THE DOOR TO YVETTE’S sanctum, the world seemed to fade away. The concussive ripples that were the only sign of Zoe’s ongoing struggle smoothed out; the shuff of Sylvie’s shoes went from a rasp to a whisper to nothing at all. Even her heartbeat seemed smothered and silent.
She’d never felt anything quite like it. Magic, most definitely, but unlike most of the magic she’d fought before, which sought to alter or warp reality, this spell seemed to be using magic to damp down reality and magic alike.
Fragile spell, Sylvie thought. An air lock of sorts for the Corrective.
She touched Demalion’s arm, tilted her head in question. Booby-trapped?
He shook his head, stepped neatly behind her. She reached out for the latch—more black iron, more magic dampening. The latch felt like … nothing in her hand. She saw her fingers curl around it, saw the white tension in her flesh as she pulled the weight of it upward, the sharp bits of old metal leaving black splinters in her skin—she felt none of it.
She shoved hard and fast and found herself face-to-face with one of Yvette’s bodyguards. She recognized this one, the red-haired man with the regrettably cut suit who’d dragged Marah out of the Dallas airport. He was armed, his gun aimed at her, and she stepped right into his space, so fast that his gun ended up pointing over her shoulder. She shot him in the chest; he flinched at the sound but didn’t fall. She shot him again, watched the bullet disappear before touching his skin.
He tried to regroup, to get away from her gun, to get her at the end of his weapon. While he was trying to shove her away, Demalion stepped out of shadows and seized his weapon, his wrists. Sylvie lifted the talisman f
rom his throat, and Demalion shot him dead.
Easy as pie.
It had taken seconds.
Murder in concert shouldn’t feel so good. But there was a quick, wild flush in her throat and skin that pointed out how well matched they were, how well they worked together.
“Yvette,” Demalion said, his voice a breath in her ear.
“And the Corrective.”
They were in a short hallway that closed in smaller and smaller as it went—no wonder the guard had been waiting foolishly close to the door, probably trying to hear their approach over the suppression of sound. If he hadn’t been claustrophobic before, a stint down here would jump-start it.
The door at the end was open, waiting for them. It was barely five feet tall, and the stone around it was old and dark. Sylvie crouched as she went through, preferring aching thighs to bending her head and losing sight of the room she moved into. Her breath preceded her and let her know that the room was enormous and cold. Cavernous. She stepped out and tried not to gape.
Cavernous was right.
The space stretched out ahead and around them, a hundred feet long, half that wide, maybe more, full of shadowy spaces and movement. More LED touchlights studded the walls but didn’t do much for making light in the darkness. Sylvie thought about earthquakes and tsunamis and shuddered.
Movement at the far end was too clearly defined to be anything but human, and Sylvie headed in that direction, each step cautious, testing, looking for magical traps, gun steady in her hands; Demalion had her back, stolen gun held at the ready. Something slick and glossy snaked over the floor; she stepped across it, careful not to let it touch her. She’d learned her lesson with the curtains. Here, in the Society’s stronghold, everything was dangerous.
She heard Demalion’s steps hitch as he adjusted to mimic her avoidance.
“Don’t be so hesitant,” Yvette said. Her voice rang out, full of echoes in this space. “If you’ve come this far, you’ve killed all my guards and witches. Now it’s just me.”
“What’s he? Furniture?” Sylvie said, focusing her attention on a blotchy shadow near Yvette. It twitched against her senses like a hastily sketched illusion.
“Nearly all my guards,” Yvette said with impatience. She waved her hand, plucked at the air, and the illusions stripped themselves off the guards bookending her. They didn’t look thrilled at being exposed to her view. “Happy now?”
“Guards,” Yvette had called them. Sylvie knew better. They were witches also. Yvette was a liar. Would say anything to get them off guard.
“It’s hard to believe we’ve never crossed paths before,” Yvette said. “I knew we’d meet sooner or later. I must admit, I’d hoped for later.”
“Then you shouldn’t have worked so hard to get my attention,” Sylvie said. Yvette was exactly what she’d expected. Competent. Confident. Arrogant. All the hallmarks of a high-ranking witch.
Sylvie’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, to that sense of motion when no one in the room was moving. It was the spell—the Corrective. The entire room was dedicated to the spell, and the glossy slick that she’d stepped over hadn’t been a puddle or a rainwater rivulet seeping down from the earth above but actual flowing water. It traced an infinity loop around the room, following channels laid into the stone floor, but it was like no water Sylvie had ever seen or heard. It flowed in utter silence, a rush of black silk chasing itself, as heavy as oil, as black as space between the stars. It wound between two tall, slim stones like a cat’s cradle spun between two upraised palms.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Yvette asked.
“Yup,” Sylvie said. Something about the water was so unnatural, it was hard to take her eyes from it, even in a room with three witches and so much at stake. “Impressive. Deadly. You’re making people stroke out with your shiny little spell. Ruining lives.”
“Tiger by the tail,” Yvette said. “I do admit that we’ve lost our … finesse of late, but you’re partially to blame, crashing around without the slightest subtlety. You do keep stirring things up.”
“You’re the one who sicced monsters on your own people,” Demalion said.
“Not my monsters, not my people,” Yvette said. “Not my problem.”
“You lie about everything,” Sylvie said. “This is definitely your problem now. Or I wouldn’t be here with a gun.”
“If I had monsters at my beck and call, would I be trying to talk sense into you? Appealing to your better nature while your … friends are killing my people?”
“Maybe you’re just tapped out, used up all your monster spells,” Sylvie said. “Or maybe Merrow, with his persuasive ways, was your only monster talker. Don’t know. Right now, I don’t care. Shut down the Corrective, Yvette, or I will.”
Yvette nodded, and Demalion growled. Sylvie echoed his irritation. She knew that gesture. It wasn’t agreement, just Yvette conveying her understanding that this was how it was going to be: that Sylvie was unreasonable. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“I really do,” Sylvie said.
“Sylvie—” Demalion said. Warning: Close her mouth, get the job done.
She kept her eyes, her gun on Yvette, but nodded that she was listening.
“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Demalion said.
“She made it; she breaks it—”
“I don’t think she did. It’s not her spell to break.”
“Oh, Michael,” Yvette said. Her tone was disappointed and fond at the same time. “This is why I headhunted you for my team all those years ago. Why did you have to change sides? Always so quick to see the problem.”
“So it’s not her spell,” Sylvie said. “But it’s her coven, her people. She knows how to—”
“Do you know what powers this spell?” Yvette asked.
“The two stones,” Sylvie said. They reeked of god-power to her. Strong beyond human skills, despite the witch sigils carved into their surfaces. “The water isn’t just flowing around them. It’s coming from them.”
“It’s been doing it long enough to wear a deep groove in the stone,” Demalion said. “To make its own path.”
Sylvie jerked her gaze downward. He was right. The lip and side of the grooves were as smooth as river rocks. The river had made itself at home.
“Those stone pillars are extraordinarily rare,” Yvette said. “Do you know what they are? Where they come from? What had to be braved to bring them back?”
Water and memory together gave her the clue, and Sylvie robbed Yvette of the satisfaction of telling her. “They’re from the River Lethe.”
“Our founder,” Yvette said, “planned it. Dedicated her lover to Hades, sacrificed him, then traveled down to Hades to barter with the god of the dead to bring him back. All a ruse, of course. Hades said no, and she begged at least, let him forget her. Hades acquiesced. Took them both to the River Lethe, where she stole a pebble from both banks before Hades ushered her out. The god thought he’d won, never thought of her again. She took the stones and ran. It took her twenty years of experimentation and effort to grow them. Another ten to create the Corrective.”
“It’s the same one,” Sylvie said. She got it now. Yvette’s awe, reluctance, even the fear of the spell she was using. The age of the surroundings, the rarity of the ingredients. The difficulty of the spell … “The very same spell. You never reconstituted it; your people never let it lapse. It’s been running for—”
“A hundred and seventeen years,” Yvette said. “Long enough for the river to grow along with the stones. For the strength behind it to grow enormous. For it to reach out to any part of the world that we need changed. If you break this spell, the backlash of it will kill me and most likely everyone here.”
“I’ll take that chance,” Sylvie said.
BEFORE SHE FINISHED SPEAKING, THE ROOM ERUPTED INTO MOVEMENT, their cease-fire broken. Demalion’s free hand latched onto Sylvie’s waist and yanked her aside just as bullets furrowed the space where she’d been.
Yvett
e, that liar, had only removed part of the illusions on her guards. No wonder they had stayed as still as they had throughout Yvette and Sylvie’s chatter—too much movement would have revealed the truth. They were holding semiautomatic pistols.
All of this went through Sylvie’s head even as she was returning fire, even as Demalion hustled them toward the nearest defensible place—ducking into the shadow of a Lethe stone. She fought him. She didn’t want to duck and cover and play at armed groundhog, taking turns shooting at each other. She wanted to take the fight to them. To kill them all. To break the damn Corrective and restore the world to its regularly scheduled way of life. To give Alex her life back.
She lunged out; Demalion hauled her back. Bullets spattered the Lethe stones, doing no damage at all to them.
“Would you stop that?”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he spat.
“Is that foresight or fear?” Sylvie craned her head, trying to keep an eye on the guards, on Yvette. One guard—dark-haired, dark-skinned, dressed to disappear, his gun held loosely but confidently in his hands—near the entryway, blocking their path out. Sylvie almost laughed. Yvette didn’t know her at all if she thought that retreat was on her mind. The guard laid down another line of fire, wasting ammunition. Whatever magics were done here, the Lethe stones weren’t the only things made stronger. All those bullets, and no shrapnel from the walls.
The second guard—so blond his hair was nearly white—was skirting the wall and the trapped river, trying to come up behind Sylvie and Demalion, trying to put them between two sets of gunfire.
That wasn’t the real plan, Sylvie thought. The gunmen weren’t even aiming well. They were distraction for Yvette. She was where the real danger lay. Sylvie had faced tougher opponents—Lilith, Odalys, a fledgling god—but Yvette was clever, and a lucky shot could kill Sylvie as easily as a powerful one.
The less time Yvette had to plan, the better. That in mind, Sylvie shifted forward again, dodged the desultory shooting from the dark guard, and rolled across the unyielding floor with a wince. She came up behind him and kicked out.
