by Lyn Benedict
Fail-safe, she thought, even as she flung it down. Dunne really didn’t trust her. A tiny bit of his spirit playing watchdog; it let her kill the Maudit, let her shoot the Fury who could heal, but turn it on Brandon and—
Sylvie ducked the strike at her knee, dodged behind a stunned Brandon, and caught a quick breath. Dunne’s spirit. Her flesh. She knew which to blame for the ugly shape the gun had taken.
The gun-snake coiled for a strike, forked tongue flickering. Sylvie forced Bran into playing living shield, ignoring his yelp. If she were right . . . The snake swayed, hesitating. Dunne’s spirit ruled it, and Bran was sacrosanct. She, on the other hand, was a heretic. “Gonna stop it?” Sylvie asked.
“What?” Bran gasped. She rocked him back and forth, keeping herself behind him. Defensively, he was a great tool. Offensively? She’d be better off with a rock.
Sylvie took a breath, stepped away from Bran, and when it struck, she was ready. It lunged; she caught it behind the head.
“Kill it!”
Bran backed away, shaking his head. “I don’t kill things. . . .”
Sylvie’s triumph faded; the snake was strong and agile, it might work its way free. And then what? The question was never answered. Its dagger tail whipped around, grew a head, and sank needle fangs into her shoulder.
Pain blazed upward; her fingers on the other head spasmed, loosening, and the snake bit down, chewing a long line of punctures across her arm.
“Oh God,” Sylvie muttered.
She yanked it away from herself, heedless of injury—it couldn’t get worse, now—and tossed it toward the shifting, blazing walls that made up the oubliette. The dark shape flailed and hit the wall and stuck, slowly being eaten away into its component bits.
Pain racked her, sent her to her hands and knees, then to darkness.
22
If at First
SYLVIE WOKE CRADLED IN BRAN’S ARMS, HIM TAPPING HER CHEEK, using her name as a lure to wakefulness, her face pressed up against the drum of his heartbeat. His gentleness was surprising considering what she had just threatened to do. She liked to think she wouldn’t really have done it—wiped out that generous concern and caring nature just to prove a point.
Not to prove a point. But if it were the only way—the dark voice said.
She raised her arms toward the ceiling, still sore, but her flesh admirably clear of serpent bites.
“Make house calls?” she whispered. “I know a girl who needs you.”
Bran dumped her from his lap. “You tried to kill me; why on earth would I help you?”
“It was a bluff,” she said. He relaxed, believing her at once. She thought, no wonder Lilith talked him in circles. He might be a god, but he was an innocent.
“If I had died, would you have resurrected me?” she asked. “Transformed me into something useful? I mean, you’re pretty handy with that, right?”
“I suppose,” he said. His eyes were wary, already seeking ways to deny whatever it was she wanted.
She gritted her teeth, forced temperance to her voice, and said, “What about transforming the oubliette walls—”
He was shaking his head before she could finish, and Sylvie sighed, exasperated but not surprised. “What?”
“I’d have to touch the spell to transform it.”
“So?”
“So I don’t think I could keep my focus while my hands burned away.” In his lap, his hands fisted, the leather creaking beneath them. “Any other brilliant ideas?”
“I don’t see you contributing,” she said. She paced the room, ignoring the way heat and dizziness rushed her every time she pivoted. “You know, when I first met Dunne, I thought you might be hiding from him, afraid of your dominant, dangerous lover. Now, I see it right. He loves you way more than you love him.”
“You don’t know anything about us.”
“I know that Dunne’s up there, getting his ass handed to him by Zeus, running himself ragged trying to find you, and keep the world in one piece. And you—” Sylvie didn’t even need to finish the sentence. One contemptuous eye sweep of the room, ending with him pinned beneath her gaze spoke volumes.
“I gave him immortality. I made him a god—”
“Things you don’t value yourself. It’s like regifting the ugly lamp. Doesn’t count toward virtue points. You didn’t save your lover’s life; he’s not your lover. He’s your bodyguard. Your servant—”
“It’s not like that,” he said. His cheeks flushed.
“From what I see, it’s exactly like that.”
“Black and white. Just like Erinya.” He changed seats to lounge on the fountain’s edge and trailed his fingers in the water. “You see things as wrong or right. User and used. Powerful and powerless. It’s not always about power. Yes, he’s my protector. I love him for it. But that’s hardly the only reason—” He dropped his head forward, hiding his face behind the flame of his hair.
“Did he even have a choice?” Sylvie said. Anger bloomed in her blood, the dark voice unfurling and crawling out through her mouth, whispering venom. “Did you make him love you? Just looked around and picked him up, a twofer kind of deal, bodyguard and fuck toy—”
“No,” he said. His voice was hoarse, trembling along with his hands. The water took on little wavelets, transmissions of his distress.
Sylvie grinned. Hitting a little close to home, maybe? “No? No, what? No, you didn’t pick him out? No, you didn’t crush his free will for your convenience? To give yourself someone indelibly loyal to make sure you never had to do anything you didn’t feel like doing.”
“It’s not like that,” he repeated, telling the water his side of it. “It’s not all one-way. I take care of him, too. When his duties are too much, I give comfort—”
“Duties that you made him responsible for. You made him the god. Gave him a hard job that never ends. Justice will never rest until the earth is scoured clean of human life. What kind of comfort can you offer that makes that bearable?”
He sucked in his breath, wrapped his arms tight about his ribs; his wet hands left streaks of water dribbling down his skin. “You think this is all my fault,” he said. “Blame me for being kidnapped.”
“No,” Sylvie said. “I blame you for staying kidnapped.”
“I can’t do anything about it,” he shouted. “I’m just human. Just like you. I don’t see you walking out of here.” He panted, cheeks flushed; she got a quick glimpse of feverish eyes, shining with a gloss of tears. Abruptly, he put his back to her.
“You’re nothing like me,” she said. “And nothing like a human. Humans are animals, subject to biology and primitive urges. Trap us, we’ll gnaw off limbs to escape. You, on the other hand, just shrug and say, don’t have access. . . .”
Sylvie blinked in the sudden silence. Her mind locked on that word. They’d been spitting it at each other often enough. Access?
She turned it this way and that in her head, a tiny glimmer of possibility cooling some of the rage trapped in her skin.
He paced a tight two-step across the oubliette, obviously unwilling to get any closer. A god, she thought, and she’d been shouting at him like he was a disobedient teenager, like he couldn’t turn her into Sylvie-jerky at a moment’s notice. If he could access his power.
She licked her lips. “What do you mean when you say access. Exactly.”
He twitched a shoulder at her, a half shrug, still sulking. She wanted to shake the answers out of him. “Tell me.”
“It’s in the dictionary,” he said, voice rough.
“I swear I will knock you down and brain you against your own fountain if you don’t take this seriously.” Sylvie forced down the adrenaline rush and sank down to sit on the false floor.
“I’m human,” he said. “Human flesh can’t hold a god’s power in its entirety. It would be like expecting a . . . a . . . sponge to dry up the ocean. My power is—”
“Elsewhere,” Sylvie said. “Someplace that you can draw on it, in tiny bits, but keeps
the majority of it stored.”
“Yeah.” He paced in the circles the oubliette encouraged. She watched his leather-encased legs go by, once, twice, snagged his ankle on the third go-round.
“You stored your magic. Exactly where? Why don’t the other gods swoop in and eat up all the set-aside power?” Her heart gave a little lurch. Oh yes, she was onto something now. “Why can’t Lilith simply help herself to it? Why all this rigmarole, when the greater part of your power is just sitting there, somewhere, waiting to be used?”
He shook his head as she spoke, confusion on his face. “They can’t get to it. It’s not a where. It’s not a real place. Does this matter?”
“Oh, it matters. Immensely,” she said. “I get it, now. You’re a god, all intrinsic power. You compared it to the ocean, you’re right. As a human, you could only carry so much of it within you. You hid the ocean, Bran, and you’re carrying that sponge.”
He opened his mouth, shut it again. “Ocean? Sponge?”
“Don’t snark. Your analogy,” she said. “You couldn’t hide your power on earth. That much power, even contained, would make ripples; witches and sorcerers would figure it was there, in the same way astronomers find black holes by their effect. You didn’t leave it on Olympus, either. A god’s power, set aside, would be fair game, right? They’d be tearing Olympus apart looking for it.”
He started to speak, one more objection or protest, and she talked over him, high on hope. “Neither heaven nor earth, not hades nor hell—” Sylvie smiled. “You stored it in an unreal place. Outside of the world. Just like us.”
Awareness bloomed in his eyes, like the rosy heat of the immortal flower. “You think it’s in an oubliette. You think I made an oubliette. I don’t know how to make—”
“Magic’s instinctive to gods, not learned. You secreted your power in a hidden place and pinched it off. Dunne couldn’t find you in this oubliette, and he’s your lover, a part of you, as well as a god. No one but you can open the safe full of goodies.”
He shrugged a shoulder again, uncomfortable. “Maybe.”
“So—look, the dilemma is that we can’t get out of this oubliette. But you can. You still have access to your power. Even in here. We have an escape hatch, connected to your skin. All you have to do is open it.”
She picked up the painting that had brought her here—torn heart, blood spray—and forced it into his hands. “I used it as a key to confound the spell. You can use it to find the path to the other oubliette. The one you control.”
23
Just Passing Through
THE LIGHT IN THE OUBLIETTE DIMMED, MAKING SYLVIE REALIZE ANEW that this little cage was Bran’s world at the moment, and like the world above, it resonated to the god. The shadows darkened around him, shielding him from her demand. The painting started to slide from his grip; he clutched it closer, like some perverse teddy bear. “I ca—”
“That better not be can’t,” she interrupted. “Of course you can. You did it before.”
“I’m barely more powerful than a sorcerer now. How can I open a spell like that?”
“I managed just fine,” Sylvie said. He didn’t need to know about Erinya’s inadvertent loan of power, of Lilith’s guidance, of the paints taken from his studio. It would only give him grounds for doubt.
“I can’t make an oubliette.” His voice, the only thing she could sense clearly of him in the growing darkness, was desperate and quiet.
“I’m not asking you to make one. I’m asking you to open the door into the one you’ve already made. I’m asking you to help me help you escape. We open the door, we go through, and we’re in an oubliette that you can leave of your own free will.”
She grabbed his wrist and dragged him toward her. The painting bobbled, but he folded it closer still. She leaned in and said, directly into his ear, “Bran, you can do this. Stop hiding, and do it.”
He shuddered; she felt the shivers move through his wrist, traveling his body like an animal’s dying spasm. She said, “Now, Bran.”
“I can’t—”
“You don’t have a choice,” Sylvie said. “It’s put-up-or-shut-up time. You claim you’re staying human to atone for your mistakes—for letting Love be abused. Prove it. Get out of here and go fix things.
“You say you love Dunne, that you’re not using him as a shield. Prove it. He’s up there, about to set off the end times if Zeus doesn’t devour him first. Rescue yourself. Save him.”
Her hand wound around his wrist, his blood dampening the soft skin under her digging fingernails. His mouth was drawn with pain.
She shook him. “Bran, dammit. Do it. You say you love the life you’ve built. Prove it. You know what’s happening up there. What the gods will do to the earth. You can stop it, just by getting out of here. Except you’re too passive, too frightened, too selfish to try. . . .”
He shook his head. “I can’t!” She shook again, and the painting’s edge hit his lip, raised a bloody line that he licked away, eyes numbed and blank.
“Dunne . . . Kevin could be dying. His immortal shell cracked by Zeus, all that power drawn out and dispersed. I bet that hurts like hell. It makes me sick to think about it, and I barely know him. How does it make you, his lover, feel?”
“Shut up!” He flung her back, not with his hands, which kept the painting clutched tight, but with power. Sylvie landed on her tailbone, whooped for air, and just as she caught it, looked at Bran and lost her breath again.
The painting was gone. Absorbed. His bare chest gaped, a bloody mass of pulled-out bone and flesh; his flayed heart throbbed once, twice, effort-laden beats that spilled blood and paint over the rest of his skin like it was a canvas. He sobbed; his fingers sank into his own chest and touched that faltering heart.
“Oh God,” Sylvie said, lunging forward to stop him from worsening the damage. She caught his bloody wrists, and they stood close, his breath sobbing and hot against her skin. The wound closed slowly, ribs pulling in, heart steadying, and then—He arched back in her arms.
His skin flashed gold, glowing with light; his veins darkened beneath the flesh and spread across his body like ink, drawing by-now-familiar shapes: loops, lines, and Greek letters last seen on the floor of a subway station. Bran’s oubliette spell. Marked in agonized flesh and blood. She leaned into him, closed her eyes against the heat and light The sudden displacement was as dizzying and as distressing as a plane’s plummeting.
His moans choked off in a gurgle, as if his mouth had filled with water, and Sylvie drowned after him. If the first oubliette journey had been a black hole, this one was a riptide, bubbles bursting along her skin, her breath gone, lungs crying out. Her hands spasmed on his shoulders, slipped free, and she fell, gasping, against a wall.
She opened her eyes to Bran’s screaming, but couldn’t find him, blind to anything but the light. Fort Knox, she thought muzzily, it’s all gold—Then Bran cried out again, and Sylvie found him, tangled in gold, like predatory vines, crawling under his skin, matching the oubliette patterns, devouring him.
It was his power, she realized. Power trying to pour itself into a human form. But human flesh couldn’t store it—it split and gave it back into the oubliette in a spray of blood and misty gold. Sylvie grabbed Bran’s shoulder, and said, “Get us out!”
“Wh-where?” His eyes were wild and black with pain.
“Anywhere! It doesn’t matter.” Blood spattered her arm where the power touched him, touched her, burning hot, raising blisters, and she said, “Hurr—”
The world blurred, gold gave way to darkness, and just as Sylvie took in a shuddering breath, a slap of salt water hit her squarely in the face.
The world was water, a tumult of oddly salty rain as if a hurricane had swept inland, bringing the ocean with it; she was sprawled in water, soaked to the skin, water lapping up around her hips, and beneath all that, the solid sense of concrete. Not a beach in a storm, then.
Lightning whited the sky, left livid purple afterimages and the brief g
limpse of a landscape in her eyes. Bran choked nearby, and she fumbled over. Of course, he’d be facedown in the water. He was nothing but trouble. She dragged him up against her. “Where are we?” she shouted over the storm. Thunder obliterated any answer he could have made; the rain slashed sideways, welting her bare skin at hands and cheek. There were ice crystals at the heart of the drops, rain turning to hail. Another flash of lightning, and Sylvie caught a glimpse of a wall nearby.
She dragged Bran through shin-deep rushing water to the dubious safety of a wall with a tiny overhang. Sylvie put her hand to it, steadying herself, steadying him, and the wall felt rough, splintery, nearly chalky beneath her hand. She sniffed. Smoke. Char. A burned-out building. Wooden, not concrete. “Where the hell are we?”
Lightning, thunder, a god shaking himself to pieces against her were her only answers. Bran crumpled; she caught him, lowered them both. There were stairs beneath them, the wreckage of a decorative railing. They were huddled in what used to be someone’s doorway, the overhang protecting them from most of the weather. In the inconstant light, Bran’s face was shocky and wet. Sylvie brushed the rain out of it. The dampness on his face reappeared no matter how often she wiped her fingers across his cheeks.
Crying, she thought. She’d broken him. When government stalkers hadn’t. When kidnapping hadn’t. When abuse hadn’t. One day with her, and she’d done this kind of damage. He felt boneless in her lap, given over completely to his misery. She’d done this to him. Sent him through pain and fire and heartache. “It had to be done,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
It was necessary, the dark voice echoed.
Sylvie had to agree. At least in theory. But the larger part of her was cringing. She had known to tread carefully, known he was fragile, and still . . . She had flung his fears in his face, dismissed his pain, belittled everything he said, forced him to confront things he had tried to forget.
Bran hiccuped in her arms, a shudder washing his entire body. His skin was cold beneath her fingers. She used to protect innocents. She rubbed his skin in hypocritical comfort, feeling uncomfortably like an abuser apologizing, swearing it would never happen again.
