by Lyn Benedict
“Aren’t you going to use your witchy powers against me? Try to save yourself?” Erinya taunted Zoe.
Zoe had closed her eyes, but her face held none of the fear Sylvie had expected. Instead, she looked utterly blank, as serene as a painted doll.
“Erinya, back off,” Sylvie said.
“I don’t like witches,” Erinya said. “I don’t like her.” A huge paw crashed into the stone beside Zoe, cracking it and shedding rock dust over Zoe’s damp hair.
Zoe opened her eyes. “I don’t like you either. But you can’t bait me into using magic. Into letting you burn me out.”
Erinya breathed out magic. Sylvie, who’d felt the entire island like an itch against her skin, suddenly felt like she’d stepped into poison ivy. Zoe closed her eyes again but kept talking.
“Val Cassavetes trained me. You know Val. Woman whose home you’ve turned into a Yucatán jungle. She’s good at what she does. She taught me more than how to scavenge power. She taught me how to refuse it. Told me that sometimes the best skill a witch had was not sucking up the available power.”
Erinya huffed. “So you’re not only a thief, you’re a picky one?”
Zoe grinned nastily. “I am a discerning shopper. I am educated and elegant, and I like the finer things. And you’re all blunt-force power, unthinking and crude—”
“Zoe!” Sylvie shouted. “Shut up.” Before Erinya stopped trying to burn her out and just bit her head off. Sylvie didn’t understand why Erinya seemed so pissed. She’d heard worse before. Sylvie chalked it up to Zoe’s special ability to needle in just the right way.
“I could bring Merrow back. Let him do all the things to you he promised he would. His little pet.” Erinya’s teeth were coated in blood, her voice thick as if she were savaging her own tongue.
Lupe had picked up the nutria and was staring at its furry face with an expression that veered between it’s so cute and I could eat it. Finally, Lupe set the rodent down, watched it scamper for a bolt-hole near the river—when did the living room get a river? And did it run fresh or salt this close to the sea? Sylvie shook the irrelevant thoughts away in time to hear Lupe say, “Eri. Don’t be silly. She’s just a girl.”
“So are you,” Erinya snarled.
“No, I’m not,” Lupe said. “She’s in high school. I’m a junior in college. Was a junior. Now, I’m a monster.”
“This place is a madhouse,” Alex said, trying to add her own distraction. “Erinya, the TV just spat out little snake things. You want to go clear them away? It’s freaking me out.”
“No,” Sylvie said. “Everyone chill out. Focus. Erinya. I need you to find Demalion for me. Then I need you to send me and Zoe there. The nice way.” It was a bad idea, but it was the only one she had left. Dunne hadn’t even let her ask him if he could find Demalion.
“Send me, too,” Lupe said.
Erinya’s teeth flashed, and she beat Sylvie to the reflexive “No!” The howl made the stones shake.
Zoe slipped away from Erinya’s gaze and sidled over to Sylvie. “You owe me,” she whispered. “Like new boots and a matching purse owe me.”
“Dream on,” Sylvie said. “I’m not enabling your fashion habit.” Her eyes never left the argument before them.
Erinya paced and snarled and slunk and lashed her tail. Lupe sat calmly and made her case. “What else am I supposed to do,” Lupe said. “Sit here in my jungle castle while you go and have all the fun? I’m a monster, Eri. Let me make the most of it. You said you wanted to see me hunt? Those people deserve me.”
“And you need me,” Zoe said, interrupting. “So don’t get any funny ideas about dropping me midtransport.”
Erinya growled, and Sylvie told Zoe, “You know, I’m rethinking taking you.”
“Oh please,” Zoe said. “I mean, I guess you’re good. You keep going up against magical things without magic. And you’re still alive. But you’re walking into a coven of witches. How many spells can you fend off at once?”
“And Yvette’s got monsters on tap,” Lupe said. “Wasn’t that the problem? The Good Sisters using monsters to get rid of their enemies?”
“You’re a monster,” Sylvie said. “By your own definition. If you go, I’ll have to watch my back around you. What’s to keep you from being turned against me—”
“Me,” Erinya said. “I’ll burn them all out.”
“No,” Sylvie said. “You are definitely not invited. It’s witches. I can handle witches. I cannot handle massive civilian casualties.”
Erinya said, “There are so many of you. Like ants. Should I be bothered by ants?”
“Is Lupe an ant?”
“No, she’s mine!” Erinya flashed another burst of pointed magic at Zoe, and Zoe rebuffed it though she looked shaky.
“No one’s arguing that. Enough!” Sylvie snapped. For a wonder, this time they all fell silent. Sylvie let out a breath. “Alex, you’re not looking well. Go lie down, try not to listen to our plans. It’s only going to tug at those sore spots in your brain. Try not to worry. We’re going to fix it. Zoe. Would you pack a bag? Anything you can find in the house that might help break the Corrective.”
“Yeah, like Erinya left anything useful in the house—”
“Zoe. Just go.”
“New boots. New purse. New coat.” Zoe stomped out of the room, and the tension faded sharply.
“I am coming,” Lupe said.
“Yeah, you are,” Sylvie said. “Mostly because I don’t want to fight you. I want to fight witches. So you’d better damn well not let any of the Good Sisters leash you and turn you against us.”
“She’s mine,” Erinya muttered again. “She won’t be leashed or seduced.”
“Fine,” Sylvie said, and faced her main problem. Erinya. One part of her thought to hell with it. The Society deserved all the pain Erinya could bring them. That same part whispered, if she just made it clear enough, made Erinya understand why bystanders should be left alone, left safe, why their attacks should be pinpoint and confined … It was a seductive thought, but ultimately not believable. Erinya would raze everything to the ground.
“Where are they?” Sylvie asked. Easiest way to make the decision. Like she even had a say. She cursed Dunne and his god-view of time. All urgency for humans, and none of their own kind. By the time he considered her request, they’d be deep into the body counts.
“Demalion? He’s surrounded by witches.”
“That’s good,” Sylvie said. “Where, exactly?”
“There,” Erinya said, waving a clawed hand in a westward direction. Fury, Sylvie thought. Not good with the details.
“Eri, I need more than that. I need a place name. An address. Is Demalion thinking anything?”
“Huh,” Erinya said, “Thinking about you. He’s annoyed. Thought you’d be there by now.”
“Great,” Sylvie said. “Just what I need. More guilt. Tell him I’d get there if he’d been a little more clear about where there is!”
“San Francisco,” Erinya said.
“Oh, fuck,” Sylvie said. Worst-case scenario. High population density, close quarters, and just for funsies, on a fault line. Forget involving Erinya. Forget instantaneous god-travel. It was overrated anyway. They could fly the normal way. And then hunt for witches in a big city. And Lupe would be no problem with TSA, and Sylvie’s guns would be checked without comment. …
Sylvie gritted her teeth. Why couldn’t Val have a private plane and a pilot on staff?
Erinya gloated. “You need me. You don’t trust me. But you need me. You think any other god will come to your call? I’ve been gracious and generous, and you should be grateful. I’ll take us all there, and we’ll slaughter them to the last witch.”
“I’m going to get my guns,” Sylvie said. What was the point in arguing? She’d gambled. She’d lost. Dunne wasn’t going to help. Erinya was. Sylvie just hoped she could live with the aftermath.
She found Zoe hiding out in the guest room, still less jungle than the other rooms, a
nd said, “You ready?”
“Is she coming with us?”
“Afraid so. I can’t make her not come.”
“You resist her pretty well,” Zoe said.
“Yeah? I don’t think you’ve got the grounds to judge that,” Sylvie said.
“You talk to her like she’s your equal, not something that will rip your heart out and give it wings so she can chase it better. And you did it in a towel. Besides, this is your room, right? Where you slept? It’s mostly human.”
“That’s because of me?”
“Your mark’s all over it,” Zoe said.
“Great. When she’s taken over the world, I can offer my services as a redecorator. What did you say to her anyway? You really hacked her off?”
Zoe fluffed a pillow and grinned. “Yeah. It worked better than I thought.”
Sylvie dragged out Demalion’s shirt, left behind, put it on over another one of Val’s tees, and another pair of slightly-too-tight khakis. “That’s not an answer.”
“Oh, I hit on Lupe. Walked right up to her in front of Erinya and Alex and kissed her cheek and told her that her scales were pretty and I bet they’d feel good against my skin.”
Sylvie choked on an inborn breath, and wheezed. “It’s amazing you’re not dead!”
“You said she wouldn’t hurt me. You were right.”
Sylvie closed her mouth on a slew of protests, all made useless now. But she decided that she was going to have one last little talk with Erinya about not injuring Zoe, even by freak accident. She might even waste some bullets to make sure Erinya listened. Bad enough she was going into battle worrying about thousands of faceless strangers; she didn’t need to spend the entire time sick with dread that Erinya would put Zoe in harm’s way.
She calmed herself, loaded her weapons, and thought, she had a plan, she had allies—even dangerous ones— and she had a goal. Everything else was distraction.
15
Mission-Minded
THEY RECONVENED IN THE LIVING ROOM BY UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT. Zoe, following in Sylvie’s wake, was more subdued than Sylvie liked, but as she glanced around, it was far better than Lupe’s false bravado and Alex’s nervous concern.
Sylvie checked her guns again, her spare ammo, said, “Eri. If I need more bullets—”
“You won’t,” Erinya said.
Sylvie decided to take that as a vote of confidence, not another invitation to argument: She was remembering why she had worked alone for so long. Too much at stake. Too many viewpoints.
“Then let’s go,” she said. “Nice and easy. Try to bring us in quietly?”
“Teach your mother to suck eggs,” Erinya snapped, and flung out her arms. Sylvie winced, anticipating pain, that strange menacing chaos of Erinya’s realm. But all she felt was hideous itching as power crawled over her skin, seeking to make her part of it. A faint whimper suggested that Zoe was having real difficulties keeping from sampling that magic, and just as Sylvie thought she was going to have to halt the whirlwind of movement to save her sister, they slammed to a painful halt.
Sylvie dropped deep into warm, salty waters, rife with seaweed. She flailed upward, got a breath of air, grabbed out, and brought Zoe, coughing and spitting, to the surface alongside her. Lupe rose up a moment later, startled but unharmed. Water beaded off her scales. “Did we overshoot?”
“We never left,” Sylvie said looking up at the Rickenbacker Causeway from below. A furious, screeching howl ripped through the air, and all over the water, pelicans surged into ungainly flight, silvery fish dodged to the depths.
Erinya hadn’t made the leap off the island.
“She’s trapped,” Zoe said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think she can leave the island. There’s something shielding it.”
“That would be me,” Dunne said. He settled on the waves before Sylvie, cross-legged, jeans staying dry despite the wave roll. “Your cage? Does it meet with your approval? It’s temporary. I can get away with it for only a while. Call it a practical joke between old friends.”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “It does. Did you leave Alex on the inside? ’Cause Erinya’s going to be furious.”
“Eros sent her home.”
Lupe shot Sylvie a betrayed glance, and Sylvie ignored it. “Can you send us to San Francisco?”
Dunne flashed inhuman, a great grey swirl of wind and storm, and the water around them grew jagged and as rough as sharks’ teeth. Sylvie wished she hadn’t thought about sharks. Or, God, mermaids. “You’re asking for a lot of favors for a woman who’s not even marked as mine.”
“Sorry. My soul is my own.”
Zoe shivered, said, “Look, I get that Sylvie’s difficult, but we’re wet and going to get tired of treading water and we really need your help. So if you want us to grovel… she grimaced. “Okay, we won’t. But I’ll say please?”
“Oh, God,” Dunne said, and it was so strange to hear that word out of his mouth that Sylvie forgot to tread water. A slap of salty water going into her lungs reminded her. She surfaced in time to hear the rest of it. “… just like your sister, aren’t you? Fine. Go. Kill witches. I’m through with you.”
The water rose up around them like a waterspout, then it wasn’t water at all. Sylvie had time to think she’d really angered him—this ride was rougher even than Erinya’s, a far cry from the hiccup when he’d sent her to Dallas—before she lost any thought beyond trying to hold on to her allies. The hardest thing to believe was that she’d volunteered for this. The travel wasn’t instantaneous; it felt endless. Cold and stormy, roiling with momentum and power. It scoured as it shoved them before it, left them blind. She gritted her teeth, determined to endure.
Zoe screamed suddenly, sharp and as brilliant as a stroke of lightning. A moment later, the storm around them eased a notch. As if the power was flowing into something else. As if it were burning through a witch. Sylvie shouted and cursed and flailed and made no headway against the power inexorably rolling them onward. Killing her sister.
They dropped hard, and Lupe snarled furiously, snapping out at everything around her—no humanity in her. Sylvie dodged her and scanned the area, taking it in, in frantic Zoe-absent chunks: nighttime sea falling away blackly and steeply to her left. Sand and stone beneath her, roughing up her skin beneath her khakis. The dark tangle that was Lupe in the night. And, finally, a white glimmer that turned out to be Zoe’s blouse. Her sister was hunched tight in the shelter of a massive rock.
Sylvie scrambled to her feet, fell, scrambled up again.
This, her Lilith voice said, is why you don’t involve family. And why you don’t rely on witches. They’re both too fragile for the job.
“Fuck off,” Zoe said, turning to glare at Sylvie. “You know you’ve got a rude-ass voice in your head?”
“Uh—” Sylvie stopped.
Zoe wasn’t dead, hurt, or even burned out. Power was crackling off of her, rolling around and around the Cain mark on her forearm and hand. When Sylvie reached out cautiously, actual sparks launched in her direction. She withdrew her hand fast.
Zoe admired the silvery, stormy halo flowing over her arm, watched that stolen power spill back and forth as she tilted her arm. It lit up the dark night like she had wrapped moonlight around her skin.
“Guess this mark is good for something. Dunne’s power should have overwhelmed me, fried me. Hell, I probably could have taken on Erinya.”
“Don’t get cocky. She would have chewed out your throat. Just be glad it saved your life,” Sylvie said. She studied their environment with a less panicked and more analytical gaze. “I think it also got us dropped too early. Dunne’s precise with power expenditure. No more, no less than is needed. Part of his no-carbon-footprint god style.”
“Well, crap,” Zoe said. “I’m really ready to take on those Society bitches.” Her lips were curling into a hungry smile. “I’ve been studying and studying and studying, and now I’ve got a chance to—”
You’re going to have to watch her, her litt
le voice suggested. She’s corrupted from that much power.
She’s high, Sylvie countered.
“Shut up!” Zoe snapped. “I am not corrupted. I am not high. I am energized. I am in control. Perfect control.”
“You’re reading my mind.”
“Yeah. A spell I always wanted to try.”
“And you tried it now? Are you going to do anything useful with it or just going to pick fights with my brain?”
“Lupe’s eating a seagull,” Zoe said. “Worry about how useful she’s going to be.”
“What?” Lupe said, looming out of the dark on three legs at the sound of her name, the mangled bird dangling from her right front claws. “Where are we?”
“San Francisco,” Sylvie said. If Zoe had sucked in enough of Dunne’s power that he’d dropped them in the wrong city, she’d be more than … energized; she’d be a glowing trail of embers across the sky, mark of Cain or no.
“We’ve got to be close,” Zoe said. She waved her glowing hand before her as if it could illuminate their path.
“There’s nothing around us,” Lupe said. Her nose wrinkled; her tongue flicked out, tasted the air.
“What, just because you can’t smell it? Witches wash, you know,” Zoe said.
Sylvie left them bickering and started walking. She had her gun; the bullets had made the trip safely with her. Her sister had made the trip. Lupe had made the trip, and, despite Sylvie pulling a fast one on Erinya, she seemed willing to fight at Sylvie’s side. All systems were go, and Demalion was waiting for his rescue.
The ground sloped away from her feet, made each step forward an experiment in faith and discomfort. Each step jarred, and the rocky substrate shifted. But the sea cliff was at her back, and there was a hint of asphalt in the darkness. A minute’s walk revealed the slash of car headlights passing by and, a minute after that, the long black ribbon of a California highway slipping downhill.
Zoe joined her, not slip-sliding on the rough terrain at all courtesy of her own glow. Lupe followed in her wake.
