by Lyn Benedict
The problem was, Erinya wasn’t making headway. Azpiazu slung her into a tree, smashing it like glass. Erinya staggered, rose up, her skin oddly leprous. As if death were touching an immortal creature.
Sylvie jerked her gaze away. If Azpiazu was transitioning, she still had a shot. He had a weakness. He had to. She just had to figure it out.
But first . . .
A low growl chilled her spine; she turned. The woman-turned-jaguar slunk toward her on three legs, one dragging. Erinya’s idea of not hurting the unwitting left something to be desired. At the moment, with the jaguar dragging hard leftward, with the leg slowing its inevitable course toward Sylvie, she couldn’t regret it.
The bear was still down, still unconscious, the broken bond releasing it from Azpiazu’s order to attack. The wolf whose face Erinya had torn was down. Freed from the binding sigil.
The binding sigil. The thing that bound Azpiazu to the women. Let him control them.
Sigils ran two ways.
Sylvie shifted stance, trying to keep an eye on the jaguar while keeping Azpiazu in her view. He was playing with Erinya, breaking a hind leg, ripping a wing off; her efforts were doing nothing but stripping him of his clothes. The jaguar crouched awkwardly, one leg crooked, her eyes glowing, teeth dripping blood and feathers.
Sylvie bared her teeth and snarled back. The jaguar hesitated, slunk back into the underbrush, gave her breathing space.
Azpiazu’s binding sigil had been carved into each woman’s forehead. For the symbology to work, Azpiazu had to have a matching sigil to influence. Sympathetic magic at its most basic.
Somewhere on his skin, hidden in the darkness, in his fluid movements, in the shadows racing his body, there’d be a sigil to match the one he’d carved onto each woman’s forehead. Onto Wales’s.
That binding link would be the last thing to change, the last piece of him that would be mortal. He was holding on to it, still controlling his “harem.” It would be small, the size of a quarter. Easily overlooked in the dimness of firelight and thundercloud. She couldn’t shoot it. Even if bullets worked on him. Even if she had bullets left.
But if she could wake Wales, he might have magical means to help. She crept toward him, trying to keep Azpiazu from noticing. Playing with Erinya just wasn’t holding his attention the way it should, though Erinya was doing her bloody best.
The jaguar lunged out from the underbrush; Sylvie dodged the killing blow but still tumbled backward, hitting the ground with a painful, breath-stealing thud.
Something slammed into her kidney with the near-familiar pain of a gun crushed between her body and the ground. But she’d discarded all the guns once they’d emptied.
She kicked the jaguar in the chest, kicked hard at the damaged leg, and the cat screamed and retreated for easier prey. Sylvie rolled, put her hand on the source of the pain, and found Cachita’s knife. Metal handle.
Obsidian blade.
The jaguar, burdened by Azpiazu’s will, kept fighting, turned her attention toward the only remaining prey. Cachita. Still contorted, face grey with exhaustion, still chanting, No no no, still locked in her struggle with Tepeyollotl.
“Erinya!” Sylvie said. “Protect her—”
“Not fair,” Erinya gasped, even as she moved Cachita’s direction with a horrible, broken stagger. She was ragged, savaged nearly past mending. “You’ll hunt without me.” Azpiazu let her run, then grabbed her remaining wing, and dragged her back. Playing.
A single moment. That was all it took. Erinya spun, clawing; Sylvie lunged after the jaguar, but was too slow.
CACHITA SCREAMED, HER VOICE SPIRALING UPWARD, THEN RIPPED into silence. The jaguar’s jaws closed down hard on Cachita’s straining neck, white teeth going black with arterial blood.
Azpiazu’s jaguar had broken the wildly uneven stalemate between Cachita and her god. No agreement could hold through one party’s being mauled. The jaguar shook Cachita; she dropped limply, eyes empty and dead.
The world shook; trees shattered all around them, earthquakes and rot mingling with disastrous results. The reflective pool cracked, let stagnant water grease the stones around them.
Azpiazu stopped stalking Erinya, paused, waiting for his chance at the god who’d given him so much, waiting for Tepeyollotl to see what he’d become. That wicked smile was on his face once more, the bubble of laughter in his throat.
“You are enjoying yourself way too much,” Sylvie said.
Tepeyollotl breathed himself into the world, an enormous concussive force that knocked her sprawling, knocked the breath from her lungs. Her ears stung as if wasps had crawled inside and attacked. When she touched them, her fingers came away wet with blood.
Erinya’s despairing moan was a fractured whisper in Sylvie’s traumatized hearing.
Enough.
They were going to lose.
They were going to lose everything.
Beneath Tepeyollotl’s looming arrival, Cachita’s body faded, drifted to smoke. Obliterated. Dead without even a body to mark where she had fallen.
Sylvie wasn’t going to lose anyone else. Not the women. Not Wales. Not even Erinya. She clutched the obsidian knife with white knuckles.
Tepeyollotl slunk down from the raised balcony, his heavy bulk overwhelming the wide, stone stairs. His smoky shadow flowed before him like a river, eating away at the stone, a destructive, intangible river. The earth trembled and rippled. Trees fell with the sound of torn fabric, of reality altering in the reflection of the god’s anger.
A sharp avalanche heralded an entire wall sliding down, hitting the shaking ground and puddling outward. Sylvie nearly lost her footing all over again, and, in regaining it, made the mistake of looking at Tepeyollotl. She couldn’t look away.
Tepeyollotl was the shattered remnant of Tezcatlipoca, Cachita had said. The god moving ponderously through the world looked shattered. He was four times human size, his flesh scarred and battered and studded with what looked like broken glass. Some of his skin wasn’t human flesh at all but a tattered and decaying jaguar pelt, equal parts black spots and char. It sagged unhealthily. He crawled on all fours, yellowed nails curling over his massive fingers, sharp enough to leave gouges in stone; his eyes were blood-red from lash to lash, and scars ran down his cheeks and throat.
Despite his bulk, his bones jutted, pressing against the jaguar pelt, against flesh that seemed parchment thin, in angular, agonizing protrusions. He raised his head, sniffed the air, nose wrinkling, human mouth drawing up into a cat’s whiskered cheek pads. His huge tongue was white-spined. A single lick would flay a man.
Still blind to Azpiazu.
That last bit of mortality, that binding sigil, hiding him. His only weakness saving him from his enemy.
Tepeyollotl’s bloody gaze locked on Sylvie. His lips peeled back. He coughed, a jungle cat’s hunting call. It rattled her bones, raised the hairs all over her body. It was all she could do not to retreat to basic mammal instinct and curl up, hoping to be unseen.
“Should have run, Shadows,” Azpiazu said. He held his hands out before him; oily darkness dripped from each palm. It flowed outward toward her like tar, spreading rot.
God of Death, indeed. And if he was accessing his new powers, her time was running short.
Sylvie lunged forward, dragged Wales’s deadweight out of the path of the rot, picked up the necromantic blade in her free hand. She kept the obsidian one behind her back, hoping he hadn’t seen it. Dark hilt, dark blade, dark night. Erinya dropped heavily down beside her, panting, coughing up something smoky and dark. Demigod blood.
Azpiazu said, “Caught between death and . . . death. What are you going to do, Shadows? Nothing. You’re just a human woman. And I’m a god.”
Sylvie’s retort died on her lips. There. On his chest. Dead center. The binding sigil—the fusion symbol that held the rest of the spells together, the last bit of human in him. The flesh there rippled, muscles straining from an exertion the rest of him managed effortlessly.
&n
bsp; “Not yet,” Sylvie said.
“Close enough,” he said. “And that knife won’t help you.” He spread his arms. “I can be generous. If you want to try . . . one last blow before I eat your heart and soul. Make you my sacrifice.”
Arrogance, she thought. Had to love it.
She grinned, dropped the silvery blade, and brought the obsidian knife up, hard, fast, and on target. It lodged right where she wanted it. Right through the spell link he had carved into his skin. The one that blinded Tepeyollotl to his presence.
Azpiazu, impaled, staggered forward, clutching at Sylvie’s arms, slipping death under her skin. Her skin grew cold and heavy, unresponsive. Nerves withering, death creeping in. Her numb hands slid on the knife’s handle, losing grip. She compensated with a full-body shove; the blade had already penetrated, its glassine edges sliding through skin, muscle, and bone as if it had been designed exactly for that purpose. She would push it deeper with her last effort, lodge it in his black heart, if that was what it took.
Sylvie didn’t think it would come to that.
Azpiazu coughed, his stolen power bleeding out, his eyes showing shock and betrayal.
“I kill the unkillable,” Sylvie whispered.
“I’ll outlast you,” he gasped, coughing.
“No,” she said. “You won’t.” She yanked the knife out, a slippery leap in her hands, and jammed it through his throat.
AZPIAZU SCREAMED, AND TEPEYOLLOTL ROARED, A CAT’S RAGE IN A human-shaped throat; a hundred or more years of his prey’s eluding him ended all at once.
He leaped forward, crashing through the remnants of the pond, into the feeble shield Erinya made. Erinya blindsided him, clung fast, and sent them both tumbling.
Sylvie felt the numbness in her body spreading, death spreading, and scrabbled at it, not physically—her hands were unresponsive—but willfully. She’d fought off Azpiazu’s curse before; she could do it again. She pushed at the creeping death, rejecting it, refusing it, finding that alien magic and shoving it back toward Azpiazu. The easier target. The dying god.
Like called to like, the balance tipped steadily. The creeping rot sank down her arms, her hands, crawled up and into Azpiazu’s chest. The air around them grew smoky and dull, heavy with the taste of burned blood. It itched along her skin, clung to her hair, her throat, her panting mouth, trying to find a way back in.
Tepeyollotl backhanded Erinya into the underbrush. The Fury rolled, a disjointed spill of limbs and wing, and lay still.
Sylvie wanted Tepeyollotl gone, needed him gone. He’d gotten his vengeance, even if not by his own hand: Azpiazu was slowly going to death. But Tepeyollotl kept prowling, growling under his breath. Sticking around, pacing tight circles when he could be hunting new souls, new followers—a swift and blatant display of power to regain his kingdom. Why? Awaiting his chance to kill her?
No, she thought. If he wanted her dead, she’d be dead. The struggle to push out Azpiazu’s dying curse was making her stupid. Tepeyollotl wasn’t going anywhere without trying to regain the power that Azpiazu had stolen. The power that swirled around Sylvie and Azpiazu like steam trapped in a lidded pot, hotter and hotter, close to exploding.
It must be driving him mad, she thought, forcing herself upright, leaning her weight on the knife, on Azpiazu’s body. Tepeyollotl was so close to his stolen powers, and yet, Azpiazu’s filtering had altered them just enough that he couldn’t reach out and take them. They didn’t fit right anymore.
He’d figure it out soon enough, poking and tasting the new flavor of his stolen power. Sylvie’s lashes drooped under the weight of it; her skin was smudged with Azpiazu’s last bloody breath.
Thing was, Azpiazu’s death hadn’t solved the imminent problem. Freed the women, yes, but Tepeyollotl and loose god-power . . . Tepeyollotl threw back his head and screamed frustration. Lightning lanced from the sky, started the trees burning, tangled snarls of fire leaping from branch to branch. Sparks spattered the shaking ground, singed Erinya’s fur, spurred her to bare consciousness.
If Tepeyollotl got his power back, they’d be standing at ground zero for the god version of a nuclear blast. If the power just . . . dispersed, every bad cess witch in Miami would suck it up and spit it back out in a thousand malicious ways.
Sylvie’s body ached. Shuddered with the magic winding around Azpiazu’s body, around her throat. It felt like that zombie constrictor again, all malevolence and injury just waiting to strike.
Tepeyollotl lowered his gaze from the sky, looked at Sylvie. She met those huge, blood-lit eyes, and knew she was out of time. He was coming for his stolen power, and coming for it now. If she wanted to keep it from him, keep it from the witches and sorcerers . . . she was going to have to take it for herself.
Her little dark voice screamed warning. She knew what happened to people who grasped magic beyond their abilities, knew that Azpiazu’s death would look gentle in comparison and yet . . . it seemed so easy to just reach out. To put her hand on Azpiazu’s rotting chest and bones and pull instead of push. To seek out the source of that char-smoke-blood power and cup it into her palms.
It was like putting her hands into the heart of a fire. They went from numb to scalding in a heartbeat. She’d expected the god-power to fight her.
It didn’t.
At her first touch, her first tug, the lurking god-energy leaped toward her and poured itself into her skin.
The world was
White-hot.
Her skin was
White-hot.
Her eyes—
She saw everything around her. The violent blurs of power-life-hunger-will that were Erinya and Tepeyollotl, the faltering hiccups of humans forced into animal shapes, so unnatural it made her teeth itch and burn, her nerves scream. She knew them, felt them all, their fears, their hopes, their dreams.
Tierney Wales, so scared, yet trying to do the right thing. A man who mourned his murderous ghosts like some men mourned their children.
The women—Lupe Fernandez, Anamaria Garcia, Rita Martinez, Elena Llosa—their tangled lives ran kaleidoscope through her mind, college student, schoolteacher, bartender, high-schooler, all their wants, and desires. She knew them down to their cores. Knew which animal shape was which, saw the overlay of their spirits in animal flesh. Saw the wounds that she and Erinya had dealt in defending themselves. Felt each wound like a brand on her skin. The jaguar who’d been blown into the trees, its back broken when Tepeyollotl came. The last wolf still crouched, slavering and terrified, in the underbrush.
Tepeyollotl lunged forward, nails clawing at her; Sylvie desperately missed her guns, and the thought was enough.
Bullets sprayed in Tepeyollotl’s direction, created and fired by her will instead of a gun. Each one felt like it ripped something out of her, replaced it with more magic.
Sylvie’s little dark voice shrieked sheer disgust, utter repulsion at the power burning inward, boring into every cell of her, seeking a home. Her body was flame.
She couldn’t contain this power.
She was.
She shouldn’t be able to. She was only human.
But more than that—
She didn’t want the power. It revolted her, this giant seething mass of magic crawling around, curling through her veins, out her fingers, through her hair. It invaded and tainted every breath she pulled into straining lungs, reinforcing every bone in her body like a coating of molten steel, jacking her heart rate to hummingbird speed. Her skin hissed with energy, a living force trying to remake her every molecule into something more. Something greater.
Something inhuman.
She burned in the night like a bonfire, and snake patterns slid over her flesh, red, black, yellow—serpent colors. Sylvie groaned, tried to hold the power at a distance, but it was as hard to shake off as lava.
Erinya staggered to three feet, flesh sloughing off with creeping rot, her exposed core smoky and scarlet, and Sylvie saw a sudden escape from an inhuman future as an unwilling god.
&n
bsp; “Erinya!”
THE FURY WAS TOO SLOW TO DODGE TEPEYOLLOTL’S REFLEXIVE ATTACK, and Sylvie reached out and yanked the Fury toward her with all the aimless power smoldering in her soul. Erinya disappeared from beneath Tepeyollotl’s grip, reappeared skin-close to Sylvie, sprawled at her feet, so broken, still angry, still wanting to fight. Sylvie wanted to give her the means to do so.
Sylvie reached down, and said wildly, “I owe you? Come and get it!” and pressed her hands down into Eri’s wild hair, into her scaly skin, and kicked the power outward. Evicted it with prejudice. Forced it into a new home.
Erinya arced under Sylvie’s hands, struggling even as Sylvie force-fed her strength and that unwanted power. Erinya’s false flesh sealed up around the gaping wounds; her scales smoothed to obsidian; her feathers grew thick and glossy and scarlet. Her teeth lengthened, grew sharp, grew white, near glowing in the dark.
Sylvie’s heart slowed, her skin cooled, pinging like an overtaxed engine. The patterns crawling her flesh slowed. Retreated. The glow oozed away from Sylvie, lit every single scale and feather on Erinya’s body.
“What did you—”
“You owe me now,” Sylvie said. “Get rid of Tepeyollotl. You’re a match for him.”
It was the best thing about Erinya, Sylvie thought, collapsing, her legs gone numb and shaky beneath her. Give her the whiff of a violent command, and she was all over it, no hesitation. It was also the worst thing about her—that endless appetite for violence.
Erinya and Tepeyollotl collided physically and magically with an impact that made Sylvie think of an avalanche. The ground shuddered, trembled, cracked wide. The ponds and fountains split, spilled their water deep into the screaming earth. The air sounded like high tide coming, crashing against a rocky shore. Sinkholes gaped, and Sylvie grabbed Wales and dragged his deadweight away from a sudden edge.
Sylvie’s stomach churned—a remnant of god-magic still working away in her, trying to rebuild her, to claim her. She tried to push it out, but it lingered, making itself at home. Fine. If it wanted to be owned by her, she would use it.
