by Lyn Benedict
“Acid rain, whatever. I don’t care. It’s been doing that for over twenty-four hours,” he said. “But it wasn’t parting for us before.” Burke goosed the accelerator, pushing the van into the sheets of water before them; the wheels slipped a little. Rain pounded the roof of the van for a bare second and stopped, like a switch had been thrown. Now that Sylvie paid attention, she realized she’d been hearing that sound pretty much constantly, a low, intermittent drumming. He swerved hard to the right, erupted into rain. It ceased again.
“We’re carrying valuable cargo,” she said. She licked her dry lips again, felt a tiny pain, tasted salt. Somewhere in the evening, she’d bitten it, or had it hit hard enough to bleed. “Someone’s paying attention.” She ignored his questioning glance, not inclined to share more information than that with the ISI.
Behind her, she heard Bran murmuring, “You know, it’s traditional to make an offering when asking a god for aid.”
“I didn’t ask,” Demalion said, and his tone was so strained that Sylvie’s attention swerved back. He held Bran close, protecting him from the jolting of the van, but his jaw was tight and tense. “Sylvie asked.”
“Jesus,” Sylvie said, rejoining them in the back, dropping to the floor with a thump that rattled her bones. “You haven’t fixed him by now? What have you been doing?”
“Fixed is a bad word,” Demalion said. “Fixed is what you do to your dog.” He seized on the possibility of banter with such enthusiasm that Sylvie knew he was scared.
“Just making sure he understands what I’m going to do,” Bran said. “I can’t reverse the curse. I can alter it. But it doesn’t absolve him of the sins that Kevin punished him for.”
Rodrigo smiled in mindless agreement, nodding, blissed out by Bran’s presence. Sylvie slapped his shoulder speculatively, and he merely rocked back and forth. Bran’s spell might have been too strong. This close to the object of his worship, for this long, Rodrigo had stopped functioning. She wondered what would happen if she slapped Bran, instead.
“I make no apologies,” Demalion said. “I did my job to the best of my abilities.” His breath was coming fast, a little panicked, and from the way he clutched at the crystals in his hands, Sylvie thought even his clairvoyance was being balked now.
“Bran,” she warned. He ignored her completely.
Bran shifted closer in his lap, pressed his lips to Demalion’s neck, and said, “That’s been the excuse for countless acts of atrocity. Aren’t you a thinking man?”
Demalion’s eyes were pure silver now, as reflective as mirrors. Sylvie wondered if Anna D would be able to scry through her son’s eyes, and slid to one side, just in case. She had enough problems already without getting the sphinx in a hissy fit.
Demalion regained his poise, and said, “Dunne was a source of unusual and unknown power. I owed it to my employers, my city, and my country, to assess the situation accurately, the better to protect my world. So, yes, I followed my orders. I judged them fair and worthy of being obeyed.”
“You ruined everything,” Bran said. “Everything.” He put his head in his hands. “All I wanted was to live in peace. To be myself and happy with Kevin. And then you came, and Lilith—I want to hate you so much.”
Demalion’s stern face softened. He might not have been able to see Bran’s beauty to be seduced by it, but the voice was powerful enough to have an effect, Sylvie thought.
“You can’t,” she said. “Can you? Not because you think Demalion has a point, which he does, mind you, but because you can’t hate—”
“I lack that fire,” Bran admitted.
“What burns hot but can’t keep a body warm?” Sylvie said, under her breath. Demalion and Bran turned identical expressions of startlement on her; she shrugged. “Sorry. Thinking of the sphinx.”
Bran made a moue. Apparently, the sphinx was unpopular all the way around, if even he wasn’t a fan.
“Sphinx,” Demalion said. “There’s another monster in all this?”
Sylvie let out a breath. So not the time to get into that. “Bran, we’re under the gun. Pick up the pace.”
Bran leaned back against Demalion, and Demalion fended him off, one palm flat against Bran’s chest, one fist holding a crystal with white-knuckled intensity. “Just the eyes,” Demalion said. “Nothing else.”
“I don’t understand,” Bran said.
“No Rodrigo specials,” Sylvie said. She waved at him, flipped him off, and Rodrigo ignored her completely, still blissed out on Bran. “No ‘love me, love me’ force-fed into his veins. Rodrigo might as well be meat at this point. We need Demalion whole, sane, and sharp-witted.”
“If I’m going to love someone,” Demalion said, “I want it to be my choice.”
“I understand,” Bran whispered. “Didn’t I choose my own life? My own lover?” He knelt up, blew a stream of air across Demalion’s eyes. When Demalion’s eyes blinked shut, Bran kissed the closed lids, right then left, and followed with a lingering kiss on Demalion’s forehead above the third eye.
Wonder what that’ll do to his clairvoyance, Sylvie thought.
Demalion’s hands, fisted tight around the crystals, suddenly spasmed and collapsed inward. His arms twitched; veins popped as if something had blocked their flow. “Bran,” Sylvie said. “Heal not hurt.”
Demalion groaned deep in his throat, through clenched teeth. His body shivered through tiny seizures.
“Shh,” Bran whispered, “ ’s tricky, this.”
Demalion fell out of Bran’s embrace, gasping, eyes wide and strained. The distortion in his veins raced upward, bulging through his shoulder into his neck.
Demalion’s eyes went blank and glassy, the eyes of a corpse, and his body fell limp. Sylvie shoved Bran out of the way, grabbed Demalion’s collar, got her hands on his throat. His pulse was strong, as was her relief. He blinked, and his eyes—changed. First from mirror blind back to his usual dark espresso, but then, before Sylvie could let out her held breath, his eyes lost color, ending as gold and as glossy as heartless topaz. The pupils rounded, then slitted catlike, before rounding outward again.
“What did you do?” She let Demalion go and shook Bran. She got in two good shakes before Rodrigo lunged forward and stopped her—They all fell into a tangle of limbs; she elbowed him in the throat, and Rodrigo yelped hoarsely. She kicked again and hit something unyielding—the driver’s seat. Burke snapped at them from the front. “Trying to concentrate! Keep it down back there!”
“I did what you asked,” Bran said, extricating himself from beneath her and Rodrigo with a muttered curse. “Kevin remade his vision. I couldn’t restore what had never changed as far as his body was concerned. That takes a full-powered god. I just . . .”
“What did you do?” she asked.
“He had two genetic choices,” Bran said. “Kevin’s spell blinded the man. I sort of . . . switched tracks on his genetic line, went the monster route?” Her hands fell away from his sweater, and he said, “Hey, he can see now. That’s what you wanted. . . .”
“Demalion,” she said. “You can see?”
His voice was rough, furred with pain and amazement when he finally woke from the abstracted trance he seemed to be in. “It’s not like it used to be,” Demalion said, blinking. He closed his right eye, looked through the left, then reversed it. The pupils slitted and flared. “It’s—Sylvie—it’s more. It’s—there are patterns. I was a clairvoyant, could see things that happened out of my sight. But this . . . Now, I think I saw bits of my future.” He rubbed at his head, and sighed, obviously at a loss for explanation.
“Old Cat,” Bran muttered.
Demalion’s attention swerved; his eyes flared. “Old Cat? What the hell are you—”
“Can you shoot straight?” she interrupted. Unmasking his genealogy in an ISI surveillance van was a capital-B-bad idea. Burke was casting disturbed glances back their way.
“You are a scary woman. But yes, I can shoot again. Hell, I might be able to shoot around corners a
t this point.”
The van swerved again; rain splashed, ceased, and Sylvie snapped, “Stop playing with the rain, Burke, or I’m going to come up there and take my bad mood out on you.”
“It’s . . .” Burke said, the van slowing. His hands shook on the wheel. “It’s not rain anymore. It’s blood.”
Sylvie beat Demalion to the front by a nose, and peered out. Her view was rapidly eclipsed by Bran, who lunged over her and jerked the window open. Blood spattered across his hands, his face. He brought his palms up to cover his eyes. His shoulders shook. He scrubbed at his face as if he could unsee it but only managed to smear the blood into his skin.
The rain’s grey needles changed to a slippery darkness that ran the streets, foaming at the curbs. The rain-free zone over the van wavered and closed in, blood falling stickily and staining the windshield, obliterating even the minimal line of sight they’d had before.
Sylvie shuddered. If the storm cloud was Dunne, the rain sprang from his soul, his immortal body. That was why it had parted for them, Dunne instinctively easing his lover’s path. Rain turned to blood—
“He’s hurt, isn’t he?” Sylvie said. “Zeus did him some real damage.” She watched the wipers sheet blood from one side of the windshield to the other, catching in the small cracks that the heavy rain had created.
“Yes,” Bran whispered, his face pale beneath the streaks of his lover’s blood. His lips lost color.
Demalion leaned into Sylvie, and said, “You were counting on Dunne, weren’t you?”
“We still are,” she said. Lilith was still out there somewhere, awaiting her chance. Sylvie’s skin prickled in waves of gooseflesh; she rubbed her arms fiercely, listening to her little dark voice growling a litany of warning. Lilith was smart. Too smart to waste time hunting them through the storm when she had to know how limited Sylvie’s resources were. When the ISI were the only resource she had left. Lilith was sitting somewhere, warm and dry, waiting for her ISI lackeys to give her a call.
“Best to go on as we’ve begun,” Sylvie said. “Not a lot of choice left. Dunne knows where we’re heading; no injury short of death will stop him. And gods? They don’t die easy.”
Bran turned to look at her, eyes wet, but he nodded. “That’s right. That’s right.” If he sounded like he was trying to convince himself, Sylvie chose to ignore it.
“That’s fine, but we’re not driving anywhere in this,” Burke said. “I can’t even see the road.”
“It’s the straight line in front of you,” Sylvie said. “Just go slow.”
“I can’t see, Shadows!”
“I can,” Demalion said. His pupils widened and shone. “Old Cat, right?” His expression was grim, beginning to piece it together. “Burke, move over.”
“No way, Demalion. No way in hell.” Burke put his hand on his gun butt. “I’m not letting you kill us all.”
A particularly vivid line of lightning etched itself across the sky, a long, jagged whip that started out phosphorescent white and lasted long enough to turn blue and red as it burned the clouds. Sylvie’s hair crackled and popped with all the power in the air. Something plummeted toward them, heard first, a whistle of tortured air, then a dark shape slammed into the roadway before them with an impact that shattered concrete and cracked all the windows in the van.
Burke put the van into reverse, fighting Demalion’s hand on his, but before anything else could happen, a fistful of talons slammed through the remaining shreds of window glass and into Burke’s chest. He shrieked, but only very briefly.
Alekta withdrew her hand, opened the door, and pushed Burke’s body into the center aisle. “I’ll drive.” Her claws closed around the steering wheel, shifted back to human shape, though red to the wrist. Her human shape was considerably the worse for wear. Her leathers were scuffed, torn, and singed; her hair was matted dark with water or blood.
Sylvie’s breath was gone. Bran was curled tight into Demalion’s side, whimpering.
“He worked for her,” Alekta said. “Waiting his chance to turn on you.” She stretched out a hand; Demalion flinched back, but all she did was reach out to tug on Bran’s hair. “Hey, baby. You okay?”
“He’d be better if he weren’t underneath a corpse!” Sylvie snapped.
Alekta turned her eyes from the unseen road, grabbed Burke’s body, and hurled it out the door. It bounced once, jolting the van as it rolled under its rear tires. The van slithered and slewed, but Alekta steered with complete confidence and worrying speed.
Demalion’s jaw was clenched so tight, Sylvie thought he might splinter teeth. With a muttered, “Monster,” he crawled into the back as far away from Alekta as he could get. Sylvie wanted to shake him. Monster or not, Alekta was a welcome ally; a better bodyguard than Sylvie could ever be. It wasn’t for simple strength and power; Sylvie had seen Erinya beaten back twice by humans—Lilith and herself—and pounded by Hera, and there was no hint that Alekta was more powerful than her sister.
No, where Alekta beat Sylvie in the bodyguard stakes was her motive. Sylvie wanted Bran alive, because a living Bran meant Sylvie got her job done, and more, Alex—healed or resurrected, she didn’t care which. Let Val mutter about dark magic all she wanted; Sylvie knew how and when to look the other way when it came to getting results.
Alekta guarded Bran for more reason than duty. The little crooning encouragements she made as she stroked his hair argued genuine concern.
Sylvie, on the other hand, kept listening to the little dark voice murmuring, He’s not worth all this trouble. Sylvie agreed silently. Bran had accused her of blaming him for his kidnapping. She’d denied it then, but there was truth to it. This was his fault. A runaway who brought trouble wherever he went.
Children ran away all the time, and Sylvie had always felt a sneaking sympathy for them, even when she was the one paid to find them and haul them back. They all ran for the same reason at the core—they felt powerless where they were. But a runaway god? Maybe there was a level of contempt in her view of Bran. If he’d been stronger, more able to use the power he held—Catch her ever being that weak-minded, and she didn’t even have any power of her own.
Bran caught Sylvie watching him and reflexively smiled, then traded it for a warier gaze. Alekta growled and slammed the van to a halt.
“Sylvie,” Demalion warned. “We’re here.”
The ISI building loomed ten stories above them, its marble facing traced in witchlight that gleamed like candle flame through the bloody, murky sky.
“You sure this is safe?” Sylvie asked.
Demalion dropped out of the van. “Do we have a choice?”
26
Reunion
IT WASN’T RAINING AT ALL ANYMORE. BLOOD, WATER, OTHERWISE. The sky above was a mass of swollen clouds with a heart coiled inward like a sky-pinned hurricane, roaring and howling at being kept from the earth. Centered, of course, directly above the ISI nest.
Lightning crackled around the ISI headquarters, weaving a net in the sky, illuminating the edges of the storm clouds, and tangling them in a fine, fiery mesh. Sylvie muttered curses. That net looked far too familiar. Dunne had blown it off once before, but could he do it again?
Bran emerged from the van, Alekta on his heels, and yelled something in Greek, throat taut with the effort, hands fisted by his sides. Words of encouragement to Dunne, or abuse heaped on Zeus. Sylvie hoped for the encouragement. If anything could aid Dunne, that would be—
The world flashed. Reversed itself in a quick strobe like a photographic negative. White/black, dark/light, and so bright that Sylvie’s eyes burned even as the sight etched itself into her vision. Sylvie cried out, heard Bran and Alekta echo it. She knuckled tears from her face, green spots dancing, red lines flaring in her line of vision. But she could still see—she let out a gasp of relief.
“Sylvie,” Demalion said, helping her to her feet. Knocked down by a vision, Sylvie thought. Gods played rough, but to what—
“Inside now,” Demalion said. He mad
e sure she was steady on her feet, and helped Alekta get Bran to his. No sign of strain on his face—but then again, now sighted like a sphinx, he might not have been affected by Dunne’s flashbulb imitation. Or he might have seen it coming and closed his eyes.
Rodrigo stumbled out of the van and fell to his knees, gazing blindly upward at the skies. Demalion reached for him, and Sylvie said, “Let him be. He’s no use to us like that.”
Demalion nodded, though obviously reluctant, and took the lead again. Sylvie followed him through the deserted lobby, the marble floor sheeted with pink-tinged rainwater; her sneakers slid and turned her hasty advance into a near skid. ISI had its own troubles, obvious by the dimness. The lobby was lit only by emergency lighting, small amber pools in the murk. Where were the guards?
“That lightning net got sucked inside the clouds.” Demalion asked Bran, “That’s good, right?”
“Not sucked inside,” Bran said. “In is out, out is in. He reversed himself. Like I did in the oubliette. Zeus bonded the net to Kevin’s storm skin, trapping him. But when Kevin turned himself inside out—”
“He trapped Zeus instead,” Sylvie intruded. “He learn that little trick from you? ’Cause I think he did it better. He didn’t bleed. Demalion, where the hell’s the staff?”
“Dead. I can smell it,” Alekta said, sweeping by them both. Her feet made strange clicking noises on the floor, and when Sylvie looked down, she saw talons peeking out through boots that looked less worn than grown.
