by Lyn Benedict
“Why aren’t you dead?” the coven leader shouted. She looked irritated, outraged, even as she directed the other witches with clipped phrases in a language that meant nothing to Sylvie. Zoe seemed to understand just fine, and countered each attempt. She made it look easy, but Sylvie saw the trembling strain in Zoe’s corded neck and braced legs.
“Because I hate to oblige you,” Sylvie snapped. “Tell your goons to leave my sister alone.”
“Only when she’s dead.”
Lupe’s marauding had drawn to a halt; she slunk behind Zoe’s shielding, baring bloody teeth, her eyes flaring in the firelight.
“You’ll go first,” Sylvie said.
The coven head sucked in a breath to object and Sylvie used her last shot to take out the witch aiming fireballs at Zoe. No invulnerability shield there. The man died spectacularly; his spell backlashing on him as the bullet penetrated, wreathing him in fire. His fellow witches twisted and fled him, and Zoe took the opportunity to let loose some offensive spells of her own.
Sylvie gaped for half a moment, watching her baby sister create a whirlwind to drop a witch directly in Lupe’s waiting claws, then started reloading.
“Sylvie!” Zoe shouted. “Go. Get Demalion. We’ve got this.”
Not a bad idea, but not quite yet. Sylvie shot two witches who tried to prove Zoe wrong; her bullets slipped through their shielding—a quick shimmer the only sign that there’d been anything to slow her bullets down. She was getting faster at finding the weak spots in their shields. Some instinct kicking in.
The coven head turned her attention back to Sylvie, began whispering another spell, no longer content to wait for Sylvie to drop dead from the life-draining spell, and Sylvie decided the woman had to go.
She lunged forward, the exertion of pushing past the spell still wrapped around her, making her heart beat hard and heavy and labored, but she had the satisfaction of watching the coven leader’s eyes go shocked just before Sylvie tackled her.
Stupid witches. Even the Good Sisters, who used guns and technology, still seemed stunned when someone got physical with them. Of course, the Lilith voice muttered nastily, it might have more to do with the life-draining spell coming into solid contact with an invulnerability talisman. Warring magic was never fun, and while the coven leader squirmed and fought, Sylvie used the burn of the conflicting magics to locate the woman’s talisman—a thin, golden bracelet—and rip it off.
The witch shrieked; age wrinkled her skin, and Sylvie put a stop to that with a bullet.
She felt better instantly, scrambling to her feet, panting, but energized. Zoe nodded determinedly at her. Another go, go, go. Sylvie dodged another spell and bulled her way through the door into the deeper recesses of the Society stronghold. The door closed behind her and cut off Lupe’s snarls and the sounds of witches fighting for their lives.
She’d never wanted this life for Zoe. Right now, though, she was damn grateful that the girl seemed built for it.
16
Clearing the Way
AS SYLVIE RUSHED THROUGH THE DOORWAY, SHE FOUND HER FEET skidding out from under her. An unexpected blessing when the air above her was strafed with bullets. Sylvie let momentum roll her over, shot in the direction of the gunfire, and had luck on her side. She cut the witch off at the shins, and when the man fell forward, having dropped his gun to clutch at his legs, she finished him off. It made her gut churn, but that was the problem with witches. If they could talk, they could kill. She just didn’t have the time to bind and gag every witch she disabled. Not tonight.
She got back to her feet, wincing as her hip protested—she’d landed hard, and the floor was unyielding as well as slick. She kicked the door shut behind her, latched it just in time to shut it in a pursuing witch’s face. The door rocked on its hinges, but then Sylvie heard the witch shout, saw the quick, poisonous shine of Lupe’s claw tips as they penetrated the wood, blood tipped.
Sylvie backed away, studied her surroundings. Where the first room had been an antechamber—bare stone floor and walls, a few punitive bench chairs—this one was more obviously used. The stone floor had been overlaid with glossy marble that shone like malachite, and dark, heavy, sound-muffling curtains lined the walls. Still, someone should have heard the shots.
Sylvie grabbed the first curtain to hand, yanked it back, and found herself in the coven’s workroom. Silver and gold lines etched a pentagram into the floor, the lines dulled by years of footsteps.
But no one around. No Yvette. No Demalion. No caged monsters waiting for their cue. No memory spell. The room was cold, and the only magic left in it was residual, as subtle as a sheen of oil.
The curtain along the wall swayed. She skirted the pentagram, thought maybe the reason no one had come to fight her was simply that they’d left her a trap to walk into.
Vaporous wisps rose from the pentagram as she passed, licking at her ankles. Sylvie stepped away from them and found herself suddenly fighting the curtains themselves.
Effective, she thought. Stupidly so. Nothing to shoot, no one to fight, difficult to breathe as the fabric did its best to pour itself down her throat. When she tried to tear the fabric, it gave beneath her nails like water and re-formed around her wrists.
But the curtains were mindless, and she was too damn stubborn to lose to home furnishings. She fought steadily, sank lower and lower until she was slipping free of their grasp. The curtains went limp, motionless once again, and left her where she’d started. She needed to find Demalion.
Priorities, her little dark voice suggested. Kill the witches; stop the spell. Then, worry about rescue.
It wasn’t the worst advice the voice had ever given her. But the thing was, the bigger the witch, the bigger the spell that broke, the worse the fallout. In this enclosed area, Sylvie had concerns that the minute Yvette went down, so would the whole structure. She wasn’t going to have time to search for him, after.
You just want your lover back, her dark voice growled.
Sylvie refused to engage it. Mostly because, as usual, it was telling the truth.
More silvery wisps rose from the pentagram, and Sylvie bent down and smashed the corner of the star with her gun butt. The metal inlay dented. She pried at it, yanked a brittle segment of old brass out of the floor, and turned to the next curtain. She used the metal to pry back an edge of the curtain. Without human touch, it behaved like normal fabric and gave her a glimpse of three open doorways down a dark hall. It reminded her of monastery cells and gave her yet another glimpse of the fanaticism that drove the Society.
She peeled back the next curtain, found another four cell doors, closed this time, and, more to the point, three witches guarding the cells. They looked up as Sylvie slithered through the curtain gap. The room, like all the others she’d been through, was dimly lit, but she found two men and one women waiting. The leader of this small crew snarled her name, “Shadows.”
She knew him. Dennis Kent. That slate grey hair and roman nose were memorable. She’d last seen him laid out by one of Tierney Wales’s soul-biting ghosts. Had thought him a typical ISI agent. She should have let Wales’s ghost eat his fill.
Before she could take a shot at him, he held up the amulet around his neck, and said, “I wouldn’t. We’re all wearing talismans. And the only vulnerable people around are your friends. You try to shoot us, your bullets will probably hit them instead.”
“Didn’t help the bitch at the front door,” Sylvie said, had the satisfaction of seeing shock cross his face.
“What?” she added. “Did you think she just let me pass? Or that I patted her on the head and sent her home? We’re past that. We’ve been past that since your lot started deciding what the rest of the world was allowed to know or remember. It’s you or me.”
“You,” he said. The first two cell doors opened and birthed snarling wolves. Werewolves by their size. Sylvie took a steadying breath, looked past the wolves’ bristling fur, into the room behind them. She didn’t even need the Lilith voice’s
assessment.
She laughed and lowered her gun, and when the wolves charged her, whining and snarling, claws scratching the stone floor, she let them brush into her, through her, and disappear. “My baby sister casts better illusions than that, Kent.” Two pissed-off, slavering werewolves and the room behind them was neat as a pin?
While he gaped, and the witches behind him held a hasty spell consultation, Sylvie ran forward. The floor here was the same malachite-shaded marble. And it let her drop and slide into him as solidly as she had ever managed while playing high-school baseball. She seized the talisman around his throat and yanked. Wouldn’t hurt him, but it jerked him around, let her use him as her own shield. She kicked out at the other two witches, disrupting their spell casting, tangling her legs in theirs.
Dangerous, her voice shouted, ringing in her ears.
Dogpiled with three witches who were wearing invulnerability talismans and wanted to kill her? Yeah, thanks, she knew. If her voice didn’t have useful suggestions, it could shut the hell up.
She tangled them all closer; the spells warred and sparked. The remaining locked door shuddered in its frame, and Sylvie turned her head to bite down hard on Kent’s throat. Couldn’t hurt him, but people had atavistic reactions hardwired. He flinched, ducked his head, trying to get her off his throat, pulled away. Perfect setup. She yanked the talisman’s cord over his head, got her gun up, and shot him in the soft underside of his jaw.
She deafened herself, stunned herself with the concussion of it, but managed to cling tight to both the talisman and her gun. Another distant crack sounded; she rolled to her feet, staggering, preparing for illusion or magic or—
Marah Stone, furious, diving directly for the witch nearest her. She got her Cain-marked hand around the woman’s throat and squeezed. The marks on her hand seemed to pulse with the woman’s labored breaths.
Invulnerability talisman or not, the woman choked.
Marah was another of God’s killers, Sylvie thought, swaying. Blood scent burned thickly in her nose, rested heavy on her hair and skin.
The remaining witch dithered between Sylvie and helping his partner, and Sylvie made the decision for him. She shoved him hard, pushed him off balance, pushed him right into Demalion’s waiting arms.
Demalion skinned his hand down the man’s neck, yanked up, and pulled out another talisman, the twin to the one Sylvie had removed from Kent. “Always had to ape Kent. See what it gets you, O’Neal?” Before the man could mouth a single spell, Demalion broke his neck.
Sylvie had a sudden and unwelcome flashback. The last time Demalion had broken a man’s neck for her, he’d died half a second later.
This time, he merely let the body drop. “Sylvie.”
“Good timing,” she said. She couldn’t stop her gaze from lasering up and down his body, looking for injury.
“Saw you playing Twister with Kent’s crew and thought you’d appreciate a hand.”
“Another point for precognitive skills,” she said. “Remind me to send your mother a thank-you note. Not to sound ungrateful, because I’m thrilled, relieved, blissfully happy, all those things, but why the hell aren’t you dead?”
Demalion flashed a smug grin. “Well. Marah told Yvette she’d join her if the price was right, so they locked her up until they had time to haggle.”
Marah said, “She can’t afford me, but I was curious.”
“As for me…
“Yvette thinks if she kills him, he’ll just change bodies, again,” Marah put in. She was searching the witch’s clothes, stripping her of anything that might be useful. Small charms, a knife, a .22 that Marah sneered at but pocketed anyway.
“I freak Yvette out,” Demalion said. “She’s scared that if I get killed, I’ll take over one of her men, and she won’t know which one.”
“Wonder how she got that impression,” Marah said. Her grin wasn’t nice at all.
“Paranoia working for us,” Sylvie said. “Doesn’t happen nearly enough.”
“Is it paranoia?” Marah asked. “I bet he could do it.”
Demalion said, “I’d rather not test the theory.”
“Yeah, let’s not,” Sylvie said. “I’ve just gotten used to you as a blond.”
A muffled concussion vibrated through the stone. Hard to tell directionality when it was beneath her feet, but Sylvie knew.
“Zoe—Oh hell, I left them fighting witches. They’re outnumbered.”
“In the antechamber?” Marah said. She pulled the witch’s talisman off the body, held it up before her, spinning at the end of its cord. The talisman, an etched, wooden scapular, looked burned. Marah’s handprint discolored the lines of spellcraft on it. Marah closed her fingers, and the wood crumbled. “Give me Kent’s, Sylvie. You don’t need it. Your sister might.”
Sylvie passed it over without hesitation, blood-spotted and sticky as it was.
“For Lupe, then,” Demalion said, handing Marah O’Neal’s talisman. “Did you see Yvette, Syl?”
“Every other witch in the world, seems like. But not her.”
“Two covens’ worth,” Demalion said. “There was one maintained here, when we were brought in. And Yvette brought her own. Well, most of her own. You killed five at Dallas.”
“Killed Merrow, too,” Sylvie said. “Shit. We’re missing at least four. And however many monsters they can control.”
“So what,” Marah said. “You shoot them. They die.” She tucked both talismans into her jacket pocket.
“You make it sound easy,” Sylvie rasped. Her throat was dry. She wanted a glass of water. Fighting was thirsty work. “Some things are immune to bullets. Yvette’s not likely to let me get close enough to yank off her talisman, and you can’t tell me she’s not wearing one.”
Marah lunged forward, shoved Sylvie against the doorjamb, and said, “You still don’t get it, do you? It’s not your bullets that do the job. It’s you, pulling the trigger. You kill things that can’t be killed by regular means. And you do it with a gun. Because you like guns. You kill things. That’s who you are. The gun is irrelevant. You’re the weapon.”
“Weirdest pep talk ever,” Sylvie said. Her heart thudded. The little dark voice crowed, Yes, yes, yes.
The ground vibrated again, arguing that whether Zoe was behind the mini-earthquakes or not, she was still fighting.
Demalion stepped closer to the curtain, and Sylvie winced, hissed his name in warning. He shook his head. “Spell’s one-way.”
“You know this place?”
“Guards talk,” he said. He peered through the curtain, let it drop. “Still empty.”
A third, sharper force vibrated through the room, this time shaking the doors in their frames. She took a step back the way she’d come. Zoe …
“Don’t be stupid,” Marah said. “You don’t have time. You’ve got to stop Yvette.”
“Why can’t you do it? I’ve let you out of your cell,” Sylvie said.
Marah said. “The thing about being a government assassin—you know when to leave the work to the specialists. In this case, that’s you. You take care of Yvette and her little memory-modification business. I’ll take care of your sister, your monster, and watching your back.”
“Awfully generous of you,” Sylvie said. Her neck was going to be sore from the quick glances she was casting around. Checking to see that the witches stayed dead, checking the curtain, checking the doorway that Yvette had to have gone through. Checking to make sure Demalion was at her side, still living.
“Don’t worry. I’m running a tab. When all this is done, I’m going to ask you for a favor. And you’re going to give it to me.” Marah licked her lips. “You have a spare gun? A .22’s not much unless you’re right up close. I’d like to avoid that until the numbers are better.”
“Witch at the curtain edge of the pentagram dropped his.”
Marah nodded, started to move. Sylvie caught her arm. “Marah. Nothing happens to Zoe.”
“You brought her here,” Marah said, slippe
d free, ducked through the curtains, taking both invulnerability talismans with her. Sylvie hoped they went to Lupe and Zoe. Hoped she hadn’t made a mistake. Hoped Marah really did have her sister in mind.
“How much of Marah’s decision to help Zoe is her just wanting to be closer to the exit?”
Demalion grimaced. “Seventy-five percent, at least. She’s got big plans, Syl. She needs to stay alive to implement them. But you’re a part of those plans. She wants you to owe her. Zoe alive will do that.”
“Not reassuring,” Sylvie said. She looked at the last door, the last step into the spider’s parlor. “Yvette’s waiting for us, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s not disappoint her.” Sylvie checked her ammunition compulsively, the good, solid weight of the gun in her hand.
She turned, looked at Demalion’s empty hands, and said, “You’re not armed.”
“Not yet,” Demalion said. “Give me five minutes.”
Precognitive. Right.
Sylvie took a breath and moved toward that final door—a thick, iron-banded door in a stone arch. It looked like the entry to a dungeon. Demalion caught her arm. “Wait.”
She turned to look at him, scowling. “We don’t have a lot of time—”
He kissed her. Chaste but heartfelt. “We have the worst dates ever,” he murmured against her mouth. “Killing witches really isn’t that much fun.”
“Dinner and dancing afterward,” she said.
“Promise?”
She kissed him again, let her breath linger with his, warmth in the midst of this chilly underground lair. “Yeah. No matter what body you end up in.”
17
A Fight to Remember
AS SYLVIE AND DEMALION APPROACHED THE DOOR TO YVETTE’S sanctum, the world seemed to fade away. The concussive ripples that were the only sign of Zoe’s ongoing struggle smoothed out; the shuff of Sylvie’s shoes went from a rasp to a whisper to nothing at all. Even her heartbeat seemed smothered and silent.
She’d never felt anything quite like it. Magic, most definitely, but unlike most of the magic she’d fought before, which sought to alter or warp reality, this spell seemed to be using magic to damp down reality and magic alike.
