As she’d promised, she made him drink her power. To the dregs.
~*~
Naomi gasped as the sky opened up. She’d never seen lightning so bright, so vicious. It came from every part of the dark ring of clouds, a flurry of bolts that bent inward to the same central patch of ground. They struck a distant place she couldn’t quite see. Shielding her eyes, she watched as thunder shook the stones and trees, trembling through her.
I kissed the thing that’s doing this. Nameless feelings gripped her, too varied to comprehend, though her hands trembled, her heart pounded, and she wanted to hide from Ryn’s eyes at the same time she wanted to… kiss her again. But carefully.
“That— That isn’t— I don’t…” Denise stared at the same sky, along with Elli. “What’s happening?” She swallowed. “Is it the end of the world?”
“I don’t know,” Naomi confessed. No one could speak louder than a whisper. “We have to get back. Come on.”
They bent to drag Patrick, who was groaning and probably concussed from Denise’s branch.
Still, the lightning struck. It had not yet stopped pouring from the clouds, battering a single piece of ground as though artillery from Heaven. She said the weather obeys her feelings, Naomi remembered. That’s… a lot of feelings.
~*~
Again and again, Ryn spent her anger in blinding neon strokes from the sky. She beat him like an anvil until her head rang, until her eardrums bled, until all she saw was blue and all she tasted was ozone.
When she stopped, she unfurled the kanaf from around her shoulders and stood alone on a singed patch of earth. When enough of her vision returned to make out shapes, she could tell nothing stood within fifty feet of her in any direction. It was only charred stumps, black ground, and boiling pits of vapor where once there had been water. A stink filled her nostrils: that of the ten million dead life-forms Saxby’s essence had split into.
She extracted the snake, the very last piece of him, and could smell his essence inside the struggling serpent. “Stay your hand,” Saxby begged, voice disconnected from any physical form. “I’ll tell you who paid us.”
“I’ve no time for lies.”
“No lies. This is the work of other deva! The Pretender and his foe, the Hidden One, and the Hidden One cannot be found without my help. I know a way. He’s paying for my experiments; he wants to use them for his plans. I could—”
Ryn tossed the serpent into the air and sliced it in half. She cut Saxby’s essence with it. His stink was snuffed from the air forever. Dead and gone, in a flash of her nails.
She ran for Naomi, making quick work of the trek in spite of her near-sightless eyes, relying on scent and intuition to navigate the forest.
~*~
Jane and Todd had dragged their rafts beneath an overhang in a rock wall and herded everyone, blankets around their shoulders, into the rubberized crafts to keep stray lightning strikes from reaching them through tree roots. Both counselors jogged out to help the girls with Patrick, since it had exhausted them to drag him that far.
“Where’s Ryn?” Jane shouted.
Naomi wheeled and stared into the forest, which was thick with swirling snowflakes. Something was coming through the gaps in the trees, a shadow pressed against the snow. “Take care of Patrick. I’ll get her.” Naomi ran toward the darker patch in the flurry.
It was Ryn. The deva hugged herself tight in her hoodie and kept her head bowed. Blood trickled down her cheeks from her ears and she leaned into a tree. Naomi could still see wisps of smoke rising off her shoulders and smell the stink of electric discharge on her clothing.
“Ryn! Oh God, Ryn, are you okay?”
Ryn stared at her mouth, and Naomi realized she was reading lips. But her eyes unnerved Naomi and stole all her words, making her want to retreat to safety with the other campers. Ryn nodded and collapsed against the tree, fell to her butt and curled her knees close, hugging them.
Naomi shivered and sank next to her friend, bopping her shoulder into the other girl’s. The deva leaned back into her, and the heat coming off her felt amazing.
When Naomi spoke, Ryn watched her mouth again. “Could you t-t-turn the snow off?”
“Sorry,” Ryn shouted too loudly. Then, more softly: “I was… upset. Afraid. For your life.”
Naomi stroked her friend’s hair, the uncertainty in that voice softening her heart. “Will a hug fix the weather?”
Ryn glanced shyly to the forest floor. “It might.”
Naomi wrapped an arm around her, squeezing.
Ryn’s attention fell to something by her foot. It was a lone plant poking from the snow and coated in a film of glassy ice. She snapped it off by the stem and blew gently, her breath transforming the ice into water. A gorgeous, sunset-colored lily lay beneath, and now its leaves were dewy with melted ice.
With gentle hands, Ryn lifted the flower and put it in Naomi’s hair.
The gesture fired her cheeks. “Thank you.”
All around them, wintry gusts had died and the air warmed. There was no more lightning and the stars began to shine down from a smooth, clean sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The Pretender
Ryn had finally destroyed the asura threat against her friend, and so had no reason to haunt Naomi’s rooftop at night. She did out of habit, liking the scrape of shingles and how it was close to the mortal but not too close. On occasion, when the auburn-haired teenager opened her window, she’d whisper into the balmy summer night: “Are you out there?”
Her voice paralyzed Ryn. That night in the tent had felt so right, but anxiety rose in her when she imagined the ways it could go awry. Perhaps Naomi knew her just the right amount to like her; if she learned more, this tenuous thing they had might evaporate.
So she stayed silent—listening, looking in, never slinking too close to the warm light of her friend’s bedroom window where, deep down, she knew she’d never belong.
And her job wasn’t wholly done either. Saxby had pleaded for his life, but he’d named names; now she had two deva to find. She didn’t want war, but she couldn’t kill just one god. Their web of alliances meant that touching one brought three more from the shadows, ready to make something of it. They’d once made a hobby of trying to cage her, some seeing her as the last wild thing to be hunted or tamed. Evidence of these battles still dotted this world: sunken nations and scars carved too deep into the Earth to heal.
She’d thought the deva too wise to cross her again, but if they so much as brushed Naomi with the hems of their robes as they passed, Ryn would commit deicide until the realm was emptied of their magic.
But now I have something they can take from me, she reminded herself, and that frightened her.
The generic-voiced people on the television reported Patrick had been questioned by police before they jailed him, and Ryn wanted to know if he’d told them anything about deva. She started her hunt at O’Rourke’s apartment, since that one always smelled like secrets.
There were sensors in his windows and a pressure plate under his carpet, all triggered to an alarm. He’s clever. She scuttled along shelves and furniture, exploring his workshop table, spartan kitchen, a refrigerator full of takeout, and shelves upon shelves of books.
One row of books all had black binders smelling faintly of goatskin. Sniffing, she drew one from the shelf. It creaked when she opened it, the words written in a code that might have been based on pictograms. Strange tongues bound in the leather of sacrificial animals. Clever indeed.
She heard his enormous heart long before he leveled the handgun on her. “Ryn Miller.” He lowered the weapon.
She shut his notebook and slid it back into place. “The leather does what?”
He was dressed in a sleeveless shirt and boxer shorts that did nothing to hide the roll of belly fat protruding. Squinting at the shelf, he unloaded his handgun. “My reports had a habit of going missing. Maybe it gets lost, or the ink’s too smudged to read, or a water main breaks in the records room…”
“Whatever you call it, it’s damn annoying for a guy who hates to forget. The leather seems to hold it at bay.” He motioned to the whole series of notebooks. “That’s everything I ever learned.”
“How did you know to use goatskin?” she asked.
“No idea. It’s probably in one of those notebooks, how I figured it out. I forget what’s inside if I don’t reread them.” He shrugged. “That’s why I keep an index. Sometimes you need to know a thing, and you need it now.”
She stroked a fingertip across the bindings. A god would have burned this shelf the moment he found it, to protect the deva. Ryn couldn’t care less. “Meticulous.”
“You know things, don’t you?”
She shrugged to avoid speaking a lie.
“I questioned Patrick Dailey. Boy said he was ‘herald’ for some kinda monster. A dragon. Occurs to me I can’t really arrest a dragon, but he was emailing that enormous hacker whose corpse we found at Primrose.”
He knows more than I do. “What else did he say?”
O’Rourke snorted. “Someone bought the kid a machete, paid for him to go to that camp. Kid claims he never met the guy in person.”
“They knew I’d smell them on Patrick if they interacted in person.”
“There was a go-between who gave him some cash. Got a sketch out of it, and the face matches some secretary who works for a corporation called Zmey-Towers. Those guys lobbied hard against Senator Bradford’s security bill.” O’Rourke eased into an overstuffed chair. “So I think Zmey-Towers is at the head of it all. Paying the hackers and the people who manipulated the Dailey kid. But I got nothing to go on. Unless you want to throw me a bone.”
Saxby had told her the Hidden One was involved. Once, they’d called him Glycon. He’d been fond of mortal cults and it seemed little had changed. “They worship a master,” she said. “His ceremonies occur on the full moon. Find who in their leadership this ‘secretary’ works for and follow her on that night. If you do, you’ll locate their whole coterie.”
“Who’s this ‘master’?”
“Someone you won’t find.” That was her job now. “But jail his followers and you’ll stymie his plans.”
“Can’t arrest people for having kooky meetings.”
“If they’re Glycon’s, they’ll do more than meet.” She turned from him, headed for the window. “Glycon kept the old ways. There will be sacrifices.”
O’Rourke took a moment to respond, perhaps digesting what she’d said. “You’re sure I can’t find this Glycon guy?”
“He and the Pretender are beyond you.”
“The Pretender?”
“I don’t know that one. He’s too young. Glycon will be hard enough to find—he carries no scent and his appearance changes through the ages.”
“The ages? Holy shit.” O’Rourke glanced at his bookshelf. “Guessing you don’t want me to start an entry on you.”
“That would be a mistake.”
“Look, from what I heard, those two… beings… Glycon and the Pretender guy, they’re at war. I know Glycon wants the Bradford bill to succeed. So what if the Pretender guy’s fighting against him?”
She snorted. “Then he’s useless. I’ve turned back Glycon’s pawns at every turn.”
“Unless,” O’Rourke said, “that was the Pretender’s play. What if he put you in motion? What if you’re his pawn?”
Ryn bristled. “I chose to defend Naomi Bradford. I chose to hunt Splat.”
“Splat?”
“Walter Banich.”
“And no one nudged you in his direction?” O’Rourke asked.
A dark mood passed over Ryn and a growl clicked from her throat. “Dust.”
“Sorry, is that a person too? Okay. Well, whoever this ‘Dust’ is, assume he works for the Pretender. You want to find him? Go through Dust.”
“Oh,” Ryn said, flexing her claws, “I will.”
~*~
Ryn shattered the museum skylight, dropping to the floor amidst tinkling glass and tattling alarms. Her dark eyes—dilated by psilocybin mushrooms—honed on Dust’s presence in a display of crisp baseball cards, each sleeved in a slab of bulletproof glass and screwed onto a plate for display.
She ripped the card from its plate, claws fracturing the clear casing in spiderweb patterns. Slamming it facedown into the display, the impact punched her claws millimeters closer to precious cardstock. “Where is the Pretender!”
Dust had gone silent, still.
She squeezed. Her claws neared the tender card where his essence rested. If they pierced him, he would die. If he moved, he might scrape against her nails, which could also prove fatal. “Where is he,” she hissed.
“I— I dunno who you’re talkin’ about!” He was awake now.
The glass cracked again as her nails burrowed closer to him. “A shame,” she taunted.
“I ain’t telling you a blessed thing till you swear to let me live.”
She scanned the display case she’d pried him from. At bottom it read, “Donated by: Orpheum Industries.” She growled at the asura in her palm. “So the Pretender owns that company. And you deceived me, an elder monster… for baseball cards? Violins and old junk?” She might have laughed at his stupidity if it were remotely a laughing matter.
“Not any old junk,” he grumped. “The best old junk. Delicious old junk. You oughta try incentives sometime, beastie. Catch more flies with sugar than murder.”
“I don’t catch flies,” she ground out. “I swat them.” She ripped the front of the sleeve off and stroked her nails across naked paper.
“Okay! Okay! Wasn’t even that bad, Jee-zus, you got problems, you know that?” She kept her nails close, but gave him space to breath. “He goes by Set—Set the Pretender. He mighta talked to me, asked if I could… redirect your attention a little. I naturally told ’im, ‘Set. Buddy, c’mon, you know I wouldn’t mess with someone like Erynis, I respect her too—’ ”
“Get on with it.”
“Long story short, he begs me to point you toward Splat and his obsession with the Bradford girl. But hey, he said you’d probably want to get involved anyway, so it was basically win-win-win. The Pretender gets Splat outta the picture, you get to eat Splat, I get the 1961 Clemente card—what’s not to love? Peace, beastie, we got no quarrel. Not with me and not with this innocent card, which, by the way, never did nothin’ but give people hope. Kill me if you gotta, but this slip of paper? Let it be.”
“How did he know I would be at the group home?” That was where Dust had first contacted her.
“He’s got eyes everywhere. He told me where to be.”
“And what about me getting out of Sacred Oaks and onto the street?” The timing was too convenient to be coincidence.
“Don’t you get it? The Ostermeier Trust Fund—the private money that used to pipe into those facilities—he sank it through some kind of Ponzi scheme. Sent the whole system belly-up to free you.”
Ryn scowled and tossed Dust’s paper house carelessly across the floor. “What is his game, Dust?” She flashed her nails. “Tell me, or I shred the room.”
“Peace, peace! Same game it’s always been—Set and Glycon, going round and round each other, snappin’ like dogs. But they can’t touch each other, not really, or the Fates would step in. They’ve all crossed their hearts and vowed to play by certain rules. So it’s all done by proxy.”
“I am no proxy!”
“Yeah, I’m picking up on that, okay?”
“Why do you call him ‘Set’? Set has passed on; he sleeps.”
“Yeah, you been gone a while, must not have heard. That’s why they call him Set the Pretender. He’s only a few centuries old, tells everyone to call him Set, but the Fates know he’s not Set. But rules are rules—gods can’t name other gods. So they call him Se
t, and added the epithet to keep him in line.”
“Then you tell me, Dust.” Ryn approached, knelt, and stroked the card lying on the floor. “Tell me quickly, before the police arrive, or I’ll end you. Tell me where this upstart calls home.”
~*~
Ryn sensed no human life in the echoing, empty Docks warehouse. It wasn’t supposed to be abandoned—it was a property of Orpheum Industries with gates, cameras, and forbidding barbed wire crisscrossing its perimeter. She descended to its rooftop and cut a hole in the skylight that was clean enough not to trigger sensors. Descending silently, she peered through the barren interior.
Scrape marks on concrete showed where they’d moved all the equipment in a hurry. The air was thick with bleach odor, the entire lofty space emptied and scrubbed of its original smells to take her off the trail of anyone who’d worked here. All that remained was a table with a single, thrumming black laptop and projectors aimed at the four walls around her. A lonely alley cat with a missing eye slept on the laptop’s keyboard, snoring softly. The cat hadn’t been put there; it appeared to have wandered into the room and found somewhere warm to rest.
As she approached, the laptop activated and the cat let out a discontented meow. It hopped from the computer, thudding to the floor and padding off to find a dark corner.
Projectors on all sides displayed forty-foot images that mimicked the laptop’s display. She was surrounded by Set the Pretender. He was a dark-skinned man with chiseled features, black eyes, and extensive tattooing on his hands and bald scalp that disappeared into a white kurta. He knelt, bowing his head to her. “Erynis. A pleasure.”
“If it is, come meet me,” she beckoned.
“I cannot help thinking that would be a… poor decision.” His mouth did something that might have been mockery.
She bore her teeth at him.
“You have many names, though none pleasant. Erynis—the implacable one. Adrasteia—the one from whom there’s no escape. Nemesis? Yes, that has a certain foreboding ring, doesn’t it? Let’s not forget Lailah—pretty. At least to the tongue. Not so pretty for those who crossed you.”
The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1) Page 38
