by Lyn Benedict
“Chicago?” Her voice was hungry, vulnerable.
“I told you I had a crappy day, told you I had to dig my way out. Never said I was alone. I wanted to go straight to a nice hotel with a Jacuzzi and complimentary robes, but no, he insisted on coming here—”
Sylvie, heart in her mouth, headed for the bathroom, half-terrified, half-hopeful. Marah wouldn’t have, couldn’t have brought her a corpse. She might be dangerous, but she was mercenary enough to want something from Sylvie. And Sylvie would owe her one for this.
Even though the crash and sputter of water made Sylvie’s gut churn, she couldn’t stop herself. A hand on the doorknob, her pulse ricocheting in her throat, and she flung the door open.
“Hey, Stone, a little privacy? Near death and a road trip doesn’t make us that close—”
Demalion stuck his head out from the curtain, blond hair damp and darkened, slicked to his skull, bruising on his cheek, his shoulder, but alive… His lips parted, moved silently. Sylvie.
Sylvie crashed into the shower stall with him; his arms tightened around her even as she slid and slipped on the soapy tile, trying to get closer.
Alive.
She was laughing, wild, triumphant. Surprised.
Though she’d talked a good game with Alex, she’d been most of the way convinced to thinking him dead. She clutched him closer, the sleek, wet warmth of him making her think of selkie lovers, bit his shoulder, trying to hang on.
“Sylvie,” he murmured, dragged her mouth up to his. Laughed low and hungry in his throat when she whined at having to release him from her teeth. “Too much time with werewolves?”
“Shut up,” she said and smothered that laughter with her breath. She pressed closer, bare feet unsteady on slick tiles, hanging her weight from his shoulders. He caught her around the waist, snagging her belt loops, holding her tight, holding her up.
Sylvie, who normally relegated shower sex to something best left in the movies, felt his hands pressing into the small of her back, the dip of fingertips tracing heat beneath her waistband, and thought, The hell with it. She pulled away, grabbed the hem of her tee, and eeled out of it, all awkward elbows and jutting angles in the small space.
He caught her wrists while they were overhead, leaned in, pressed her back against the cool tiles. She arched into him, hissing, and he kissed her wrists, her palms, his breath as heated as the water splashing her skin.
“Clothes in the shower, Sylvie, really?” He ducked his head; the light in his eyes familiar even in Wright’s paler shade, making it no surprise when the next kiss hovered at her mouth without connecting before descending to her throat, the rasp of his stubbled chin waking a thousand tiny nerve endings to singing pleasure.
“Tease,” she said, tangling her hands in his hair—different, she cataloged. Demalion’s hair used to feel like mink to her, back when he was original recipe. Now, it felt like raw silk, equal parts coarse and soft. Different, but wonderful.
He popped the button on her pants; she released his hair to help shimmy them off her hips. Both of them were breathless with effort and desire by the time the clinging fabric was peeled off, abandoned on the floor of the shower stall.
His hands closed on her hips, wordlessly urging her closer, tighter. She tried to climb him, cracked her knee against the tile, and swore, staggering backward, losing that brief press of connection. Missing it immediately. She whined in frustration—but that was shower sex for you, bumps and bruises and awkward clinches that broke just when they were getting really good, terrible footing, and someone’s back always got slapped up against the chilly tiles.
Her tongue tangling with his, tasting heat and the bitterness of soapy foam, Sylvie thought, awkward or not, she wouldn’t trade this moment for all the silk sheets and scented candles in the world.
At last braced, balanced, they rocked against each other, trading breathless frustration for laughter, and finally for a pleasure that had their voices cracking against the ceramic tiles, saw them sprawling in the morass of water and discarded clothes that soaked the floor. Her shampoo bottle had tipped, overlaying the scent of sex and the sea in the room with a lashing of citrus foam.
Sylvie kicked feebly at her pants, unblocked the drain, and put her head back to Demalion’s shoulder and listened to the gurgle of water receding. In a moment, she was going to get up, shake this lassitude from her veins, drag Demalion with her to the bedroom, and never mind the assassin in the living room.
He stroked her wet hair, smoothing it from the wild kinks and curls it had worked its way into. “I should check in with the locals.”
Sylvie stiffened, rolled away from him. “About that.”
He propped himself up on his elbows. “What?”
“You haven’t been watching the news.”
He rolled up to sit cross-legged. He looked tired suddenly, and past the first flush of their reunion, she saw dark bruises on his arms, his hands, his shins. Marah’s words came back to her—had to dig out of a premature grave—mixed with the memory of the collapsed ISI building in Chicago.
“The Miami ISI, too?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Mermaids.”
He shoved his hair out of his face, scrubbed a hand over a jaw rough with stubble. “Mermaids. Fuck. What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t know,” Sylvie said. She shrugged. “Beyond my pay grade. I got my ass kicked and for nothing. I’m sitting this one out. I’ve got a client who needs me more than the ISI does.”
He stiffened all over, and said, “Are you shitting me? You’re sitting this one out? My coworkers died, crushed or ripped apart by a sand wraith, and you’re sitting this one out? What, just because we’re government, we don’t rate?”
Wow, she thought. Forty minutes, give or take, and they were at odds again.
Gunfire in the next room derailed their argument. Four shots, quickly fired, and a roar of something inhuman. They scrambled for the towel—the last towel; Sylvie grabbed Demalion’s discarded shirt, draped over her sink, yanked it on, and bolted for the living room, Demalion crying out for her to Be careful!
* * *
HER FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT HER LIVING ROOM HAD GOTTEN A HELL of a lot smaller, filled with Erinya’s inhuman shape. Her second thought, even less useful than the first, was to wonder if Erinya had grown. Her front feet, talons extended, crushed Marah face-first into the western wall of Sylvie’s living room; Erinya’s tail lashed against the eastern wall, knocking magazines and books from the shelves. She bulked twice as large as a tiger, scented the room with pissed-off animal musk and the cloying, damp weight of ancient jungles. Black porcupine spikes, tipped in scarlet and gold, rose from her back and nape, jutting upward in threat.
The carpet beneath her hind claws slowly transformed to loam, vines twining out of the listing bookshelf.
Lost in gaping, in yanking Demalion’s shirt around her, it took her a moment to understand that there were words beneath the guttural rolling growl emanating from Erinya.
“Where is she? What have you done to Sylvie?”
“I’m here,” Sylvie said. Her voice sounded thin against the vastness of Erinya’s anger, but it was enough. Erinya’s head turned; her nose wrinkled and flared, scenting her.
“You smell like old cat. Like him.”
Marah squirmed, got her gun up, and shot Erinya beneath the chin, point-blank. The concussion of it filled the room and overflowed, much like Erinya herself. Demalion shouted in surprise, but Sylvie was just waiting for the aftermath.
She’d shot Erinya herself once upon a time, multiple bullets tearing into the demigod’s immortal skin; the Fury had shaken the bullets off, healed the wound in minutes.
This time, amped up to full god status, the bullet only bloomed against her jaw, flattening out like a flower, and dropping to the carpet.
“Eri!” Sylvie shouted. “Stop it!”
The cops were going to be called. The last thing they needed was a clueless, trigger-panicky cop added to this b
izarre domestic dispute.
Erinya’s spiked hackles settled but hissed and rattled against her nape like a nest of angry snakes. “I came to see you, and she shot me. Can I kill her?”
Truthfully, Sylvie was stunned that Marah was still breathing. The assassin was tough; even now, she looked pissed instead of afraid, had her body braced in such a way that Erinya’s strangling grip was uncomfortable, not breath-stealing.
“Sylvie!” Demalion said, clutching his towel in one hand, a gun in the other. “For God’s sake, tell her not to!”
Sylvie jerked into speech. “Don’t kill her, Erinya.” At least, not now.
Erinya glared past Sylvie at Demalion, then calmed as if she’d read Sylvie’s thoughts. She probably had.
She dropped Marah, shifted direction, leaped over the breakfast bar, and yanked open the fridge. “You never let me do anything.”
Demalion slipped past Sylvie, helped Marah up from the floor. The woman rubbed her throat thoughtfully.
“What were you thinking?” Sylvie said to her.
“Hey, lay off,” Demalion said. Marah coughed when she tried to contribute to her own defense.
Sylvie refused to feel bad. What kind of idiot took on a monster like Erinya with a gun?
We do, her little dark voice said.
That’s different, she shot back. We’re different.
“You okay?” Demalion asked. He tugged Marah as far from Erinya as possible in the small space.
“Not a problem,” Marah said. Her gaze never left Erinya, shrunk back down to human size, human shape. “You often host gods in your apartment, Sylvie?”
“I host all sorts of unexpected guests,” Sylvie said.
“I don’t like her,” Erinya said. She pulled a steak out of the fridge, a monster hunk of beef that Sylvie knew hadn’t been in there. “Make me dinner?”
“Be a big girl. Put it in the oven yourself,” Sylvie said. “How about Marah promises not to shoot you again, and you don’t squish her like a bug. And, Eri? Can you get rid of the jungle?”
Her apartment was unrecognizable, and Sylvie, dreading the moment her neighbors called the cops, couldn’t help but be distracted by the new plant life turning her apartment into a conservatory. She batted a flowering vine away from her face with unnecessary vigor. It left a dusting of rusty pollen all over her hand.
Marah and Demalion had their heads bent close together, and it made Sylvie nervous. Demalion, on his own, she trusted to the ends of the earth. Demalion, with the ISI at his side? A little less.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to kill my family either,” Erinya said. “But if you had to, I’d forgive you. You’d forgive me, right?”
Sylvie said, “What are you talking about?”
Erinya shoved the steak into the oven—it flared scarlet with fire inside, and Sylvie closed her eyes. Erinya was a god, she reminded herself. Wouldn’t burn the apartment down. Even if she’d turned the oven interior into a fiery pit of some kind. Erinya wasn’t exactly up on electricity.
“Family. Her. You.”
Marah coughed again. It sounded a little like a laugh. “Told you we should have had a chat. Months ago, I told you. Properly get to know each other. You know. Hey, I’m Marah Stone. I’m not just the ISI cleanup crew. I’m your cousin on your great-great-great-whatever side.”
“Bullshit,” Sylvie said.
Demalion’s face reflected her own surprise, and Sylvie felt a flare of shameful relief that he didn’t know Marah well enough to know that.
“Truth. But she wants to kill me,” Erinya continued, hauling the steak out, barely warmed. She put it on a platter, looked at it without any hunger, and said, more quietly, “They all want to kill me.”
“She’s ISI,” Sylvie said. “Kinda their raison d’être.”
“It’s a good reason,” Marah said. “Her kind is dangerous. I mean, look at your apartment. Look outside.”
Erinya’s jungle hadn’t lessened—Sylvie’s apartment was one step away from growing moss in the damp, green heat. But a glance out the front window showed that Erinya’s stress had translated on a much wider scale. The chlorine blue pool had gone green and dark; the vines that snaked around Sylvie’s furniture also coiled around the sun deck, creeping into the laundry room. The carved, limestone alligator cracked like an egg and birthed a dozen small, squirming hatchlings.
“Erinya can control herself,” Sylvie said, hoping it was true. It might not be. Gods leaked. That was a fact. Even Dunne, who’d been brutal in his self-control, had leaked. A new god, a god with a history of indulging her appetites? “And she will. Erinya, pull it back.”
“Why should I?” Erinya said. “If I’m living on earth, why can’t I redecorate?”
“You want to play house? Fine,” Sylvie said. “Get a house, and leave the world alone. Pull it back.”
“Not the boss of me,” Erinya said, a familiar complaint. The flowering vines in the kitchen withered, crisped, and burst into dust. Sylvie would need to vacuum, but at least she wouldn’t need a weed wacker.
“Good,” Sylvie said. “Now, go do the outside. And make sure you get the little snappers out there. Kids swim in that pool.”
Erinya scowled. “Don’t eat my steak.” Then she vanished.
Marah shook her head. “Yeah, she needs killing.”
Demalion said, “Stone. Watch the attitude. Or you’ll have Sylvie on your ass as well as Erinya.”
“Not the boss of me,” Marah sniped, imitating Erinya, gaining another growl, this one from Sylvie.
Demalion threw up his hands, disappeared into Sylvie’s bedroom, slamming the door behind him. It had a distinct attitude of women!
Marah made a face as he left. “I thought he’d be in a better mood once he’d gotten laid. Of course, you two were pretty quick about it.”
“What the hell are you even doing here?” Sylvie wanted to be in her bedroom with Demalion.
Marah drew a finger across Erinya’s steak, licked the juice from her skin. “Lilith’s side. So bad-tempered. No wonder you like that damned monster-god. Our side’s a little more sensible.”
“My side, your side. Whatever. You keep playing coy with that info. I don’t think it really exists.” She wasn’t going to ask outright, no matter that she wanted, maybe even needed the answers. Marah was mercenary; Sylvie owed her one already for Demalion. She knew if she asked, Marah would add that to the tab.
“God, you’re difficult.” Marah leaned back against the counter, shifted her weight to one hip, crossed her ankles. “Go on, tell me who my daddy is. I’ll give you a clue if you like. He brained his brother with a rock.”
Sylvie hung her head. Oh yeah. Like Lilith’s side of her genetic line wasn’t enough to deal with. She tended to forget who helped father it. “Cain. You’re Cain’s line. I’m the progeny of Lilith and Cain, and you’re the progeny of Cain and whoever.”
“Got it in one,” Marah said. “This?” She held up her red-stained hand, made jazz fingers at Sylvie. “This is the infamous mark of Cain.”
Sylvie swallowed, thinking of Zoe marked in that way. Her witchy mentor—Val Cassavetes—had to have known. Had to have kept that secret from Sylvie.
“Your first kill, and it blooms if you’ve got the right blood in your veins,” Marah said. “Comes with perks, too. Like a magic shield of sorts. God does seem to like us killers. I mean, you’ve got magical resistance, too, right? The new Lilith and all.”
Sylvie didn’t say anything, didn’t trust anything Marah was saying either. No assassin was going to blithely show off their ace as simply as that. It was false sharing, designed only to make Sylvie feel obligated to respond in kind. She knew better than to fall for it.
Demalion, returning, dressed in clothing he’d scrounged from the oddments he’d left behind the last time he was in Miami, did fall for it. “So why doesn’t Sylvie have the mark? She’s half-Cain, and she’s killed people.”
He fiddled with the sleeves where they pulled a little tight across hi
s arms. He’d added muscle to Wright’s body since the last time he’d worn those clothes. Right now, Sylvie felt like he’d added some muscle to his head.
“Hey, she’s in the room,” Sylvie said. “And she’s killed monsters.”
Demalion shrugged a bare apology. “It’s not like you know the answer, right? Aren’t you curious?” Sylvie groaned. The worst of dating an agent. It wasn’t enough for Demalion to know her; he wanted to know what had made her the person she was. Hell, he probably kept his own set of files on her, separate from the ISI’s.
“Lilith’s stronger,” Sylvie said. “See, there’s your answer.”
“But Zoe’s marked—”
“Hey,” Sylvie snapped. Bad enough they were discussing her. Zoe was off-limits.
Marah’s dark eyes were inquisitive, bright with calculation, but she was polite enough to back off the topic of Zoe. Not polite enough to drop the conversation.
Sylvie, heart beating oddly fast in her chest, wasn’t sure whether she wanted the conversation to continue or not. Marah might have answers. Marah might be full of shit. Sylvie figured it was a fifty-fifty shot.
Don’t trust her, her little dark voice whispered.
Not a problem, Sylvie thought.
Instead, Marah pushed herself off the counter, circled Sylvie, making her very aware that, of the three people in the apartment, she was the only one underdressed. “Lilith is stronger,” Marah agreed. “But harder to wake. You had to have been exposed to her influence, somehow. An inoculation to wake the body to the virus’s presence.
“You could have run into Lilith herself,” Marah continued when Sylvie stayed stubbornly silent. “But from the files, you were already nipping at her metaphysical heels when you killed her. So not the progenitrix. Lilith’s progeny? You play chew toy with a vampire? A succubus? A werewolf?”
“Does it matter?” Sylvie said. “I don’t know how it happened. It just did.”
“Details always matter,” Marah said. “Especially when I’m trying to figure out which side you’re on. You hang out with werewolves. And you’re claiming friendship with a god who’s violent and insane.”
