Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel

by Lyn Benedict

  Were there, even now, video files slowly changing back? Where a mangy coyote running down a Texas county road suddenly grew spikes and saber-tooth fangs and became more obviously the chupacabra? Where blubbery pieces of dead whales washed up on a shoreline slowly lengthened and twisted and became the sea serpent it had been before the Corrective hit?

  Were there old newspapers with wild accounts of magical events, with conclusive photographs reshaping themselves on microfiche, in the recycling bins, in the landfills?

  Zoe would know.

  Now that she’d thought of Zoe again, the anxiety was sharp in her chest. She’d survived. Demalion had survived. Her sister? Sylvie gave Demalion’s gun back to him. He raised a brow. “You don’t want it?”

  She readjusted her broken hand, using her good hand to brace the elbow on her bad arm, to keep it upraised. Still throbbed and complained. “I trust you to take out any stragglers we missed.”

  Demalion ushered her toward the door, looked back once at the cavernous room. “Amazing.”

  “What?”

  “It’s still standing,” he said. “That’s a first for you, isn’t it? Leaving something other than wreckage behind—”

  She kicked at him, and he laughed, a little wild. A little giddy. “Shut up,” she muttered. “Or you’ll be sleeping on the couch.”

  “Your apartment’s probably under surveillance. We’ll be sleeping in a hotel.”

  “Then you’ll be sleeping on the floor,” she said.

  Rediscovering the bodies of Kent and his team drove the laughter from her voice. Yeah. She might have left the building standing, but she’d done bloody damage to the people defending it. She looked at Kent’s waxy face, the gore that made a void of his throat and jaw, and couldn’t regret it. It was war. She’d won.

  The treacherous curtains were peaceful and motionless, and she forced herself to recall that Marah had passed through them unscathed. It still made her nerves flare to brush up against them. But they behaved as curtains should, and she took her good hand from its task of makeshift sling, and yanked the curtains down as they passed through. No more magical booby traps.

  They hissed down like a rain of snakes, coiled limply across the floor. Sylvie eyed them warily, tried not to turn her back on them as they hustled—her wincing, him limping—across the ruined pentagram and back to the antechamber.

  It was empty of life, and Sylvie’s heart turned over. Bodies littered the floor, bloody or burned beyond recognition. Panic shivered through her, the cold coil of rage—she shouldn’t have trusted Marah.

  Demalion’s eyes flicked over each body just as hers did, each of them racing to disprove her fear. He said, “Zoe’s not here.”

  A yellow spark of light illuminated the dark tunnel they’d come through, and Zoe’s voice, ragged and exhausted, said, “That’s ’cause we got the hell out of Dodge in case you brought the roof down. Marah said you probably would.”

  “Zo—” Sylvie raced across the room, caught her sister up, one-handed, smelled char and fire, not just from the lighter Zoe hastily clicked shut.

  “Did you do it?” Zoe asked. “Break the Corrective?”

  Sylvie leaned back. “None of your memories changed?”

  “Should they have?”

  “Only if you ran into something big and magical before, I guess.”

  Weariness was settling onto her like a shroud. The earth above their head seemed suddenly oppressive, crushing her with its darkness and chill. Demalion caught her around the waist as she sagged. He groaned as he did so, and she forced herself to stiffen her spine, carry herself. He was wounded, too.

  “Come on,” Zoe said. “Let’s get the hell out of here before someone comes to investigate.”

  “Investigate what?” Sylvie muttered.

  “Your part of the fight might have been quiet—at least, we didn’t hear it. But ours was not. We set off the ISI alarm above. Marah’s up there shutting it down.”

  “And Lupe?” Sylvie said, following her sister’s voice through the dark tunnel.

  “She’s … okay,” Zoe said.

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  “She’s not sure.”

  Sylvie stepped out into a thick fogbank tinted with dawnlight, pink and gold and palest violet. It was almost a physical relief after the closed-in dark and blood of the underground base. Two shapes swirled out of the mist and joined them. Marah Stone, a long, lean figure—the only one of them who was moving smoothly. Behind her … it had to be Lupe. Back in human shape. Completely human. Down to her fingertips.

  “Lupe,” Sylvie said. “You’re—”

  “I was killing them. They decided the best way to fight me was to make me normal again.” Lupe’s voice was blank where it should have been exultant. The bad guys had done what Sylvie couldn’t. What Lupe had wanted for so long. Given her back her human life. Maybe it was just too much, all at once.

  Sylvie had a bad feeling about it, though, remembering Lupe fierce and savage and powerful. That kind of feeling was addictive.

  “Marah,” Demalion said. “Transport?”

  “SUV’s waiting,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. I know a place we can clean up.”

  MARAH’S PLACE TURNED OUT TO BE A SKETCHY-LOOKING PRIVATE clinic surrounded by barbed-wire fences. Inside, Marah waved the doctor over without a word. The doctor took one look at the lot of them, bruised, broken, bleeding, and simply nodded. He whisked Sylvie away for X-rays of her hand before she could do more than blink in the bright fluorescents. The smell of burned coffee was strong, and she managed to convince him to give her a cup right after he shot her full of some powerful painkiller.

  “I’m immobilizing your hand,” he said. “Just to get you to your next destination. You’re going to need surgery and pins. There are twenty-seven bones in your hand. Thirteen of them are broken.”

  “Feels like it,” she said. Inwardly, she was thinking, only thirteen? Another thing to thank her magical resistance for.

  He sent her back into the room Marah had commandeered. Sylvie got her first real look at her team. Demalion’s lacerations weren’t as bad as she’d feared. He’d managed to do more than just lift that sorcerous werewolf up; he’d held him away from his body as best he could. Eight jagged claw marks scored his side and shoulder, but they were fairly shallow; a series of deep punctures at his hip marked where the wolf had bitten down. A crew-cut woman who looked like she belonged in army greens drew another line of sutures through his flesh.

  Demalion met Sylvie’s eyes and nodded. I’m okay.

  Zoe drew her attention next by the simple gasp she let out. She stared at Sylvie’s swaddled hand, braced from every angle possible. “Oh God, what happened?”

  “Bonebreak spell.” Sylvie took in her sister’s appearance in full light and did some appalled gaping of her own. “Oh, Zoe…

  Zoe tossed her head; the brutal burn across her neck and jaw glistened in the white lights of the clinic, shiny with salve. Her hair on that side was a charred, frizzled mass. “It’s okay,” she said. “Nothing a chic haircut and a small illusion won’t fix. It’s not that bad.”

  Sylvie bit her lip hard, sat on the low, padded table beside her. Her knees felt soft, fluid. When she had control of her tongue, she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I knew what I was getting into,” Zoe said. Her eyes were hard and bright; she squeezed onto the table also, a line of warmth along Sylvie’s side. “I opened up the earth below the witch who did it. Feel worse for her. She’s down amidst the magma.”

  Marah grinned from her place by the door. “I like your sister, Sylvie.”

  “Yeah, I meant to say—what the hell, Zoe? Earthquakes in a fault zone? That was a fucking huge risk, don’t you think? We were all underground!”

  “It was not,” Zoe argued right back. “Jeez, Sylvie, use your brain. That stronghold had stood for over a century. It survived the 1906 earthquake. You know what that means?”

  “They were lucky?”

&nb
sp; Demalion rolled his eyes. The nurse in the room didn’t even look up as they argued over magic and earthquakes. Sylvie wondered if she was even listening at all. She seemed utterly practiced in ignoring anything but the wounds she was dealing with. She finished the last stitch, leaned forward to reach for a roll of gauze, and revealed a handgun strapped at her spine.

  Sylvie had the strong suspicion they were in an ISI chop shop. Safe enough, she supposed. There was no one left to lead the ISI. Graves. Riordan. Yvette. All dead. No one to take their places. No one to come after her for the time being.

  “You don’t get it, Sylvie. Those witches worked enough magic to make the ground completely stable. There are anti-earthquake charms all over the area. Hell, the rest of the world will fall into the sea before that place feels so much as a tremor.”

  “Yeah, that might explain why it’s still standing after Sylvie got through with it,” Demalion said. “I thought that was too good to be true.”

  “We were damned lucky. I kept expecting Yvette to sic one of her leashed monsters on us. I guess she was tapped out.”

  “Or thought she’d get caught in the cross fire,” Demalion said. “Those monsters were pretty much the raze-it-to-the-ground type.”

  “I would have done my best to make sure she did,” Sylvie said with a shrug.

  Lupe slunk into the room; a toilet flushed behind her. She was changed, wearing white scrubs, and she looked very small as she curled up on another examining table. She sat silently, watching her hands open and close. Her nails shone short and soft and human. Pink and white, the traces of an old French manicure brought back from the past. She had two black eyes forming—probably a broken nose—red-yellow bruises rising on her arms, but other than that, she looked just like the girl Sylvie had seen months ago—the clean-cut college student.

  Until Sylvie looked into her eyes. Lupe was never going to be that girl again, no matter that she’d gotten a reset on her humanity.

  Demalion shifted in his seat, reached out, and distracted Zoe when the nurse applied one last sheen of salve to Zoe’s burned face and neck.

  Too little, too late, Sylvie thought, but Zoe seemed to find some measure of relief in the application. She closed her eyes, sighed into it, tilted her head so the nurse could get her cheek.

  Sylvie swallowed guilt—her beautiful baby sister—and dread. Her parents were not going to be happy. The nurse nodded impartially at all of them and left.

  Zoe touched her arm. “Hey. Sylvie. It really is okay. I know a lot of healing spells. And with this? Val can’t object to me practicing them. She might even teach me some offensive spells. Mostly, she’s just showed me defensive ones. I had to make it up as I went along.”

  Sylvie shuddered. “Thank you for not telling me that before we took on the Society. I would have died of worry.” Demalion reached over, twined his fingers with her good ones, squeezed.

  “Hey, I’m badass even on defense. Shielding and magical pitfalls and illusions and mind reading. You can do a whole hell of a lot with those.”

  Marah interrupted them. “You shouldn’t play defense, Zoe. Not with Cain’s mark on your hand. You’re a killer. It’s a waste of your talents.”

  Zoe shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Sylvie had never been so glad to hear that annoying word out of her sister’s mouth.

  Before she could tell Marah off for trying to—what? Recruit her sister?—Demalion said. “Airport next, Marah?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s safe enough. So, four tickets to Miami?”

  “Four?” Sylvie said. “Where are you going?”

  “So eternally untrusting,” Marah said. “If you must know, DC. There’s a job opening at the head of the ISI. It’s got my name all over it.” She smiled. Smug. More than that. Happy. Accomplished.

  “That’s what you want? That’s your plan? To take over the ISI?”

  Marah let her smile widen. “Oh yeah. It’s been a long time coming.”

  “You’re a lunatic,” Sylvie said.

  “Related to you,” Marah said. “Seriously, why wouldn’t I? Power, prestige, loads of excitement, and things to kill. I’m an ideal candidate. Magic resistance and everything. There’s going to be more money than ever being shunted our way once people really sit down and come to grips with their shiny new memories of monsters and magic.”

  “You, too?” Demalion asked.

  Zoe and Lupe traded left-out, puzzled glances.

  “Three out of five,” Sylvie said. “Odds don’t look good for the rest of the world.”

  “Positive thinking, Sylvie. Positive thinking.”

  “See, I like that,” Marah said. “You coming to DC with me, Demalion? There’s definitely a place for you in my ISI if you want it.”

  Sylvie stiffened, but Demalion’s answer was quick and certain. “No.”

  “Not even if I offer you a top position?”

  “You’re quick to assume no one will object to your taking over,” Sylvie said.

  Marah smiled. “I’ve got it locked. Don’t you worry about that. I have persuasive and powerful friends. I even have you to back me as director of the ISI. That’ll be something to show them. That I have Shadows on my side.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely,” Marah said. “After all I’ve done for you, do you really feel you can say no?”

  Sylvie sighed. There might be worse things, she thought, than having Marah in charge of the ISI.

  Not much, her little dark voice said. An assassin in charge of a secret government organization.

  Probably not going to be secret that much longer, not if the Magicus Mundi wasn’t secret. People were going to want to know that there was a plan—Sylvie studied Marah’s smile and felt suspicion. Somehow, this was all working to Marah’s benefit. Every step of it. The attacks that killed the ISI heads, the unmasking of the Society, Marah’s easy capture by Yvette’s people, even Sylvie’s owing her debts. But she hadn’t known about the Society. Until Sylvie told her. Right?

  Just a clever mercenary. Seizing the moment.

  Seizing it right now.

  “So, you never answered me, Demalion? If I made you a division head? Rejoin the ISI? Excitement. Molding the world. Saving people?”

  Zoe stiffened at Sylvie’s side, all youthful indignation. Sylvie, older, wiser, thought he might say yes. He could do a lot of good as a division head. He had always believed in the ISI goals.

  “No,” Demalion said again. “I’m sticking with Sylvie this time. I think I’ll get enough excitement and saving people working with her. And hey, we unmasked the Mundi. She’s going to need another partner.”

  “Can we just go home?” Lupe interrupted. Tears slicked her face, looking painful as they squeezed past her swollen eyes. “I don’t care who goes to DC as long as I get to go home.”

  “Seconded,” Zoe said. Her shoulders sagged; her hands shook. Her bravery and adrenaline were wearing off. Sylvie wanted the inevitable crash to be somewhere other than an ISI clinic. She wanted them to think of her as strong, not to be messed with. Not the teenager she actually was. A tear smudged Zoe’s face, trickled crookedly through the burn salve.

  Sylvie herself wanted to get someplace familiar. Safe. There was a certain sensation in the air, a feeling that all the bad luck they’d dodged was just out there, waiting. Biding its time.

  The world, Sylvie thought, was holding its breath. Waiting to see who flinched first. The human world or the Magicus Mundi.

  MARAH PUT THEM IN FIRST-CLASS SEATING, WHICH LEFT SYLVIE feeling irritably grateful since there were fewer people to gape at them in the curtained-off area. She curled up next to Zoe, Demalion reaching across the aisle to brush his hand against hers every time she jerked awake. Lupe traveled in complete silence, not sleeping. Not talking. Sylvie didn’t think it was just because she was caught between Demalion—who she didn’t know at all—and the window. Sylvie thought about changing seats, thought about trying to piece together whatever made Lupe look like she was dying in
side, but the painkillers swept her back under, and she didn’t wake until they landed.

  She staggered out, leaning heavily on Demalion’s shoulder, bumping into him when he hesitated.

  The security at the airport seemed … tense. Sylvie found herself wondering how many of the guards were reeling beneath returned memories that pointed out that there were far more exotic dangers than terrorists. Three out of five, she thought. Again, she found herself grateful to Marah for getting them back home with such speed. She had a feeling flights were about to get complicated.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she murmured to Demalion. “We’re not unnoticeable. And they’re jumpy.”

  As they moved through the concourse, she heard whispers, watched heads turn toward the news stations playing every few hundred feet. Same two words on every lips. Key Biscayne. The news stations showed the Rickenbacker Causeway blocked off with police vehicles.

  Shit.

  Erinya was still throwing her weight around. Now there was no memory sink to hide it.

  She quickened her pace though it made her hand ache, made Demalion hiss as the change pulled his stitches. Zoe adjusted her stride smoothly, kept her head down, her burned hair and cheek hidden in the shadow of Sylvie’s body.

  They lost Lupe; Sylvie turned and found her staring at the raised television screen, watching the flashing police lights, the line of text running beneath: INEXPLICABLE ECOLOGICAL CHANGES ON KEY BISCAYNE.

  “Take me there,” Lupe said, when Sylvie touched her shoulder. She twitched away from the touch.

  “It’s crawling with cops.”

  Lupe shot her a scornful glance. “You expect me to believe you’re afraid of the cops? After what I’ve seen? No.” She shook her head. Determination flared in her voice, brought life and fire to it. “Take me there.”

  Sylvie breathed out. “You’re the client.”

  DEMALION GOT THEM ONTO THE CAUSEWAY AND PAST THE FIRST OF the police barricades by rolling down the window and fishing out his federal credentials. Sylvie had to smile, though it felt tight on her lips. All of the shit he’d gone through in the past week, and he still had his ID to hand? The man was born to be a Fed.