by Lyn Benedict
Sylvie’s other arm snapped out, a knife-edged hand aimed at one thing only: the spell sticks clenched in Lilith’s fist. She struck them straight on, yelped at the jolt they gave her, as unpleasant and as startling as the dentist’s drill. One of them slipped Lilith’s grip, and the golden glow stopped completely.
Sylvie made an attempt for the second stick, but Lilith burned some of her stolen power to fling Sylvie away without touching her. Sylvie, half-expecting it, rolled this time and saved herself a concussion.
Sylvie panted, “No finesse, no points for style. Brute force is so passe. Some god you’ll be.”
Lilith ignored her, scrabbling for the fallen stick, and Sylvie pounced, this time, directly for the neck: She liked it when Lilith flinched. She wanted to see it again.
Lilith’s back was to her, her nape bared as she fumbled the sticks back to her hands, back to spinning. Perfect for Sylvie. She got both hands around Lilith’s neck, but her nails made no impression. Lilith sent her sprawling back, without apparent effort.
But Sylvie had felt something beneath the bland button-down collar, a serpent slide of leather under her clawing fingers.
A flash of memory; Lilith in the subway, tricked out in goth cowboy gear, complete with sheriff’s star. It had hung from a woven leather thong. Then, Sylvie had thought it just wry fashion statement. But if Lilith wore it still, wore it when every other part of her masqueraded as a white-collar worker, from the crisp white blouse to the navy pumps beneath dark slacks—it might be something else. Something important.
A hailstorm of pebbles and gravel poured from the sky, stinging Sylvie’s bare hands, her neck, her head, increasing in size as the torrent continued. Sylvie huddled up, protecting her face, wincing as a rock the size of a softball pelted the roof inches from her, biting her lip as her back stung and welted.
Lilith was getting the hang of her stolen power and had found a way to keep Sylvie off her back from a distance.
Dunne was murmuring again; this time it wasn’t in any language Sylvie recognized, something liquid. She wondered briefly if it was aimed at helping her. She doubted it.
Sylvie rolled away, aiming for the shelter of the rooftop stairwell. Each step toward safety put Lilith farther from her reach.
The golden motes in the air swirled suddenly, blown as if in a sudden draft. A faint ripping sound reached her, and a sudden stink of arterial blood. Erinya emerged onto the roof in human form, sheeted in blood, with three livid claw marks across her face.
Magdala galloped into sight on Erinya’s tail, four-legged, skeletal, bat-winged, and heading straight for Lilith.
Lilith threw up her hand defensively; fire leaped from her fingers, first ruddy, then white-hot, coiling around her palm. The fiery blast washed over both Furies, tumbling them over the edge of the roof. Sylvie clapped hands over her eyes before realizing it wasn’t balefire, that she hadn’t just bought herself a ticket to an ashy death. Lilith wasn’t that strong yet, couldn’t summon balefire by wishing it. Yet.
The glow that stippled Lilith’s skin faded, as did the fire. The rocks pelting Sylvie shrank back to pea-sized, stinging, but mostly harmless. Lilith panted and forced the vortex spell back into action.
Don’t let her get that strong, the dark voice said. Stop her now. With no further plan than that, Sylvie moved forward. She didn’t even bother with stealth. Between the whine of the vortex spell, the rattle of falling gravel, and the Furies clawing their way back onto the roof, Lilith’s attention was well and truly elsewhere.
Lilith wasn’t a sorcerer, or hadn’t been. Her invulnerability had nothing to do with her immortality; she’d implied as much in the El station. It might have everything to do with an amulet. Gadget witches did so love their trinkets.
Sylvie got her hands on the cord, and Lilith knocked her back again, but it was too late. The thong whizzed through Sylvie’s clawing hands, the sheriff’s star thunked into her palm, and Sylvie yanked. The thong snapped, leaving a tiny red welt on Lilith’s neck, already beading with blood.
Lilith clapped her hand to it, eyes wide and wild.
“Forgotten what pain feels like?” Sylvie asked. “I’ll remind you.” She drew her fist back and punched Lilith in the face.
Stupid, the dark voice said. A wasteful blow.
But so very satisfying, Sylvie told it. Between her fingers, the thong seethed with motion and repaired itself. Sylvie laughed, and slung it around her own neck. Now, this is more like it.
Sylvie had never been all that fond of hand-to-hand fighting. She much preferred her guns, which made variables of size and strength almost irrelevant.
But this—she was just as glad the guns were spent. She craved Lilith’s skin shredding under her nails. Use her, would she? Sylvie didn’t play pawn for anyone. She stepped out into the spray of gravel, pausing for a brief second to enjoy the fact that she couldn’t feel its sting.
Erinya crouched low, ready to dive in, and Sylvie’s attention swerved. “Mine,” she growled.
Erinya dropped her eyes in surprising obedience. Lilith took the chance to murmur a spell under her breath and vanished. Magdala clambered over the roof’s edge, fighting her own weight, and sniffed. “Still here,” she growled. “Somewhere.”
Sylvie swept the rooftop with her gaze. An eddy of gold shimmered near the other side of the roof, not spilling over, but disappearing steadily nonetheless.
There, Bran said, a thready whisper.
No shit, she thought, already in motion. If she misjudged, if Lilith dodged the right way, Sylvie would find herself over open air, but that thought only occurred in the tiny piece of space and time between motion and contact. She slammed into Lilith hard, nearly had them both over the edge.
Doesn’t matter, the dark voice crowed. You can stick the landing. Sylvie laughed again, an edge of mania in it. Lilith flared under her hands, bubbles of power rising, bursting against Sylvie’s clutching hands.
“Burn,” Lilith said. The illusion of invisibility broke with her voice.
Sylvie’s shirt smoked.
Sylvie shook Lilith, even while slapping at her own skin, damping whatever blaze had started. The metal of the star felt warm against her skin.
Lilith jabbed at her eyes with the spell sticks, and Sylvie caught her wrist, pounded it against the edge of the roof. Lilith yelped. The sticks clattered free. Sylvie snatched them, ready to hurl them over the edge.
“Burn,” she heard Lilith shout beneath her, and the sheriff’s star on Sylvie’s chest burst into white-hot flame under Lilith’s touch. The star fell free; slagging as it went. Sylvie screamed as the molten metal wrapped around her arm for a brief caress before dripping to the ground. Her hands spasmed, and she dropped the spindles.
Beneath her, Lilith screamed also, as the effort she poured into breaking the invulnerability charm left her mostly human again. Sylvie wrapped a hand in Lilith’s hair, attempted to pound her skull into the roof.
Lilith gouged at Sylvie’s neck, reaching toward her eyes, and Sylvie rolled away, covering the spindles with her body. Lilith tried to get them, nails digging at Sylvie’s side, and Sylvie fumbled a rock into her hand. She brought it up, crashing it into Lilith’s temple. Lilith dodged in time to turn it into a scalp wound, nothing more serious, and Sylvie, in pure incandescent rage, rolled her over and struck down.
Squirming, Lilith caught the blow on her shoulder and managed to pinch the long nerve in Sylvie’s arm. The rock in her grip trembled, but Sylvie refused to let go.
A sudden pulse, like a giant heartbeat, rocked the roof. A roll of grey fog passed over them, through them, and circled the roof, corralling all the drifting bits of Bran.
A small distant part of Sylvie wondered what that effort had cost Dunne, to use his own faltering power with such a finesse for borders, but most of her was fixated on wiping Lilith off the map. In the silence as the world was cut away from them, she heard a tiny word, a word weighted by Erinya’s growl. Matricide.
Sylvie’s hot b
lood cooled as if a glacier had breathed on her. Magdala met her eyes, licked away a bloody streak on her cheek with a long, inhuman tongue, and sat back, watching. Any excuse, her posture said. Yeah, Lilith wasn’t her mother, but hadn’t Anna D said it? That Sylvie was the first of her children to be awake? Maybe it was close enough to give them the excuse they wanted.
The rock in Sylvie’s hand trembled and fell. The dark voice wailed as they fell out of concert with each other, but Sylvie shuddered. So close to a crime the Furies considered unforgivable. The dark voice snarled, You’re damned anyway. Dead anyway. Make her pay for it.
Tentative hope sprang up in Sylvie’s chest. Would Erinya bother to warn her if her life were already forfeit?
Lilith laughed, a sound hoarse and sore. “Cain’s child, too. A rock in your fist. But you should never show mercy.” A flick of her fingers, and a tiny stick dropped into her hand, a thin matchstick, brittle, breaking, a tiny ghost flare promising balefire. . . .
Sylvie scrabbled for something, anything, found a weapon, plunged it into Lilith’s chest. Lilith’s shriek broke off into a familiar whine. Sylvie glanced down, at the blood on her hands, at the spindle embedded in Lilith’s rib cage. Glowing, spinning, dragging power directly into her heart.
Mistake, she thought. Bad mistake.
As if Bran had just been waiting for blood, the motes that made his soul poured toward Lilith, as if she were the black hole. Sylvie heard a protesting gasp from Bran, but it wasn’t repeated. Instead, the gold began to shift and struggle. If Bran had been sleepwalking through the transformation before, now he was awake, aware, and very afraid. The more concentrated streamers of his power coiled tightly around Dunne for aid.
Lilith vanished from beneath Sylvie, reappeared closer to Dunne, closer to Bran’s power.
Sylvie pushed herself to her feet. She didn’t know what she could do, but she had to do something. Dunne was at the end of his strength.
She shook her head. Careless thinking. He wasn’t at the end of his strength; he was at the limits of his ability to control that strength. In the storm-cloud core of him, Sylvie saw a sight as bleak as a nuclear winter. He could stop all this. Smite Lilith, force Bran into shape, but he couldn’t do that and keep his strength confined. Working against himself was burning him to nothing. The raveling of his body was considerable. His torn arm was gone, and a large divot was eating out his rib cage.
“Erinya. Magdala.” Dunne held out his good arm. There was pain in his voice. “I need you.”
Magdala leaped forward. Dunne held her close, and she dissolved into him. Erinya looked at Sylvie, and said, “Save Bran.”
“Eri—”
“I only kill things; sometimes you save them,” Erinya said. She turned and burrowed into Dunne, fading. His body, torn and winnowed, arced. Light flashed once, and when it was done, he was whole again. But his right arm was a thing of scale and feather, with a hand that flashed talons.
Lilith glowed brightly against the grey shielding Dunne had surrounded them with. Sylvie gritted her teeth; she was going to get swatted like a bug buying Dunne some of his “moments.”
She took a step forward, and Dunne’s hand caught her, pulled her back as he passed her. “I’ll deal with her. You—” He licked his lips. She caught a pale glimpse of fangs on the right side of his mouth, the jut of animal muscle, before his words made it through. “Help Bran. Protect Bran. Whatever he needs to put himself back together.”
29
Picking Up the Pieces
HELP BRAN. PROTECT BRAN. SO MUCH EASIER SAID THAN DONE, Sylvie thought, when she was overwhelmed by the idea. So much simpler to fight an enemy than aid an ally who had given up. Lilith wanted to be a god so desperately, and Bran—he had wanted to be human. And Sylvie had taken that away from him.
Sylvie had failed before, pulled defeat from victory. She had no intention of doing so again, not when Demalion had died to make this victory possible.
Across the roof, Lilith scrabbled at the shielding Dunne had ringed them round with, tearing bits free like curls of paper beneath a cat’s claws. Under Dunne’s influence, the curls only rewound and sealed themselves tighter. Lilith wasn’t going to be able to run away.
Lilith doesn’t need to, Sylvie thought. Not if she could absorb more of Bran. The power still flowed toward her, into her, like water running inexorably downhill. Dunne must have been thinking on the same lines; a strange construct swirled into place around Lilith, gleaming like a mirror and acting like a dam. Power still slipped in, under, and over it, but it was a bare trickle compared to what had been heading her way. The rest of it pooled up against the dam and glimmered, a wealth of power and potential just drifting.
“Bran,” Sylvie said. It was a whisper, drowned in the sounds of Lilith cursing Dunne as she chipped at the dam, temporarily letting go her attempt to escape the shield. Made sense, Sylvie thought. If the shield fell, and Lilith escaped, the power would pour after her; with the dam up, though, she couldn’t take the power with her.
Of course, if Sylvie could get Bran back together, Lilith could do nothing, either. Bran’s mind was still around, somewhere—his occasional words reassured her that her task was at least theoretically possible.
A subtle vibration of rage, so low-pitched that Sylvie felt it in her bones before she heard it, came from Dunne, as Lilith continued to fight him. Dunne had taken more than the Furies’ strength for his own, obviously, Sylvie thought as she watched him stalk Lilith with a predator’s calculated patience. Unearned patience. Sylvie wanted to scream at him to hurry.
Do something, the little dark voice warned. If you fail here, Dunne will take us apart. Or Lilith. The only way to win—
“—is if Bran’s whole,” she said. Behind Dunne’s rooftop shielding, strange bursts of white light flared and faded. Someone or something was working its way in. A wild card no one wanted or needed.
Sylvie spun, looking, hunting for some hint that Bran’s consciousness was near and able to hear her. The gold spill of his power seemed massed in three places; one, the mindless juncture of Lilith and working spindle, two, the needy coils winding about Dunne, and—there—by the stairwell. A cloudy density hovered, heedless of the currents of struggle. It wasn’t particularly big, but it was almost man-shaped.
Sylvie realized it was hovering over Alekta’s corpse. Definite consciousness, she thought. Grief—an inevitable part of love.
“Bran,” she said. She put a tentative hand out, stirring the nebulous cloud to shifting, sending a cold chill through her skin, as if a ghost had turned in its path to touch her in return.
She loved bad jokes, Bran whispered. But she didn’t know that until she came to be Kevin’s. Until she followed him to the mortal world. This is my fault. But I thought—
Hurry, hurry, the dark voice shrieked, but Sylvie tried a gentler approach.
“You thought you could get away with it,” Sylvie said. Her lips were dry, and when she licked at them, one cracked and bled. “You thought you had it all under control. It hurts to find out you’re wrong,” she said. “But dying isn’t going to make anything better.”
That’s not what you said earlier, Bran communicated, and, despite the sullenness, Sylvie was heartened by his anger. Anything was better than that pervasive grief and despair he’d been projecting a moment ago. Anger, she could live with. But grief—it drowned her, made her numb, thinking of a pair of gold-flecked eyes.
Behind her, Dunne said, “Hurry, Sylvie.” followed by a low groan.
Aggravation mixed with a healthy dose of terror spiked her. “You think Alekta’s death hurts you? Wait ’til Lilith gets smart and uses your power for something other than brute strength. Wait ’til she uses it as it wants to be used. Wait ’til she goes for Dunne’s weak point. His heart.”
She can’t. . . .
“She can. She will. She’s not stupid, Bran. Just frantic. Why did she choose you in the first place? Not simply for your availability. She plans long range. She wanted your powe
r specifically. She’ll be a new and different and deadly kind of Love. And Dunne, who already has a piece of you in his makeup . . . I’m betting he’ll fall easy. You may not have forced him to love you. She will.”
His protests fluttered against her mind, and she shook her head, ignoring him. “Imagine what she’ll do to him. He’ll be her puppet as she makes war on heaven, and sends the Magicus Mundi into chaos.”
“No.” An actual word. A brief eruption of mouth and teeth and flesh. “Kevin’s mine.” There was a hint of body breaching out of the glitter-ghost.
“Then you’d better fight for him,” Sylvie said. “But you can’t do it like this—she’d eat you up like dessert.”
“You do it—”
“No,” she snapped. “Bran, I can’t—”
“Thought you didn’t believe in can’t,” he whispered in her ear, a cool breath, a ghost of something warmer.
“Just do it,” she said. “It’s not my battle. Live or die, the world rests on you.” She coughed, suddenly bone-weary. She dropped to a crouch, as close to a state of readiness as she could manage. Her head rang, and her vision blurred and faded. Her arm burned steadily where the charm had melted, and she kept smelling scorched flesh, even over the blood.
“I’m no good at confrontation,” he murmured. “I couldn’t save myself. You think I can save Kevin? The world?”
Sylvie bit back her retorts. He might be protesting, but he was also doing it. Pulling himself together, making something solid and real out of a ghost image in a gleaming fog.
Like the artist he was, he made a sketch first, a thinned-out body delineating the borders where paint would lie were this anything so ordinary as a canvas. If she had to name the sketch, Sylvie would call it Apprehension, his fear evident in every line, the edge of a bitten lip, an arm that wrapped itself around the jut of a rib, the nervous twitch of a man expecting to be struck.
