Lies & Omens si-4

by Lyn Benedict

  Fragile spell, Sylvie thought. An air lock of sorts for the Corrective.

  She touched Demalion’s arm, tilted her head in question. Booby-trapped?

  He shook his head, stepped neatly behind her. She reached out for the latch—more black iron, more magic dampening. The latch felt like … nothing in her hand. She saw her fingers curl around it, saw the white tension in her flesh as she pulled the weight of it upward, the sharp bits of old metal leaving black splinters in her skin—she felt none of it.

  She shoved hard and fast and found herself face-to-face with one of Yvette’s bodyguards. She recognized this one, the red-haired man with the regrettably cut suit who’d dragged Marah out of the Dallas airport. He was armed, his gun aimed at her, and she stepped right into his space, so fast that his gun ended up pointing over her shoulder. She shot him in the chest; he flinched at the sound but didn’t fall. She shot him again, watched the bullet disappear before touching his skin.

  He tried to regroup, to get away from her gun, to get her at the end of his weapon. While he was trying to shove her away, Demalion stepped out of shadows and seized his weapon, his wrists. Sylvie lifted the talisman from his throat, and Demalion shot him dead.

  Easy as pie.

  It had taken seconds.

  Murder in concert shouldn’t feel so good. But there was a quick, wild flush in her throat and skin that pointed out how well matched they were, how well they worked together.

  “Yvette,” Demalion said, his voice a breath in her ear.

  “And the Corrective.”

  They were in a short hallway that closed in smaller and smaller as it went—no wonder the guard had been waiting foolishly close to the door, probably trying to hear their approach over the suppression of sound. If he hadn’t been claustrophobic before, a stint down here would jump-start it.

  The door at the end was open, waiting for them. It was barely five feet tall, and the stone around it was old and dark. Sylvie crouched as she went through, preferring aching thighs to bending her head and losing sight of the room she moved into. Her breath preceded her and let her know that the room was enormous and cold. Cavernous. She stepped out and tried not to gape.

  Cavernous was right.

  The space stretched out ahead and around them, a hundred feet long, half that wide, maybe more, full of shadowy spaces and movement. More LED touchlights studded the walls but didn’t do much for making light in the darkness. Sylvie thought about earthquakes and tsunamis and shuddered.

  Movement at the far end was too clearly defined to be anything but human, and Sylvie headed in that direction, each step cautious, testing, looking for magical traps, gun steady in her hands; Demalion had her back, stolen gun held at the ready. Something slick and glossy snaked over the floor; she stepped across it, careful not to let it touch her. She’d learned her lesson with the curtains. Here, in the Society’s stronghold, everything was dangerous.

  She heard Demalion’s steps hitch as he adjusted to mimic her avoidance.

  “Don’t be so hesitant,” Yvette said. Her voice rang out, full of echoes in this space. “If you’ve come this far, you’ve killed all my guards and witches. Now it’s just me.”

  “What’s he? Furniture?” Sylvie said, focusing her attention on a blotchy shadow near Yvette. It twitched against her senses like a hastily sketched illusion.

  “Nearly all my guards,” Yvette said with impatience. She waved her hand, plucked at the air, and the illusions stripped themselves off the guards bookending her. They didn’t look thrilled at being exposed to her view. “Happy now?”

  “Guards,” Yvette had called them. Sylvie knew better. They were witches also. Yvette was a liar. Would say anything to get them off guard.

  “It’s hard to believe we’ve never crossed paths before,” Yvette said. “I knew we’d meet sooner or later. I must admit, I’d hoped for later.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have worked so hard to get my attention,” Sylvie said. Yvette was exactly what she’d expected. Competent. Confident. Arrogant. All the hallmarks of a high-ranking witch.

  Sylvie’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, to that sense of motion when no one in the room was moving. It was the spell—the Corrective. The entire room was dedicated to the spell, and the glossy slick that she’d stepped over hadn’t been a puddle or a rainwater rivulet seeping down from the earth above but actual flowing water. It traced an infinity loop around the room, following channels laid into the stone floor, but it was like no water Sylvie had ever seen or heard. It flowed in utter silence, a rush of black silk chasing itself, as heavy as oil, as black as space between the stars. It wound between two tall, slim stones like a cat’s cradle spun between two upraised palms.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Yvette asked.

  “Yup,” Sylvie said. Something about the water was so unnatural, it was hard to take her eyes from it, even in a room with three witches and so much at stake. “Impressive. Deadly. You’re making people stroke out with your shiny little spell. Ruining lives.”

  “Tiger by the tail,” Yvette said. “I do admit that we’ve lost our … finesse of late, but you’re partially to blame, crashing around without the slightest subtlety. You do keep stirring things up.”

  “You’re the one who sicced monsters on your own people,” Demalion said.

  “Not my monsters, not my people,” Yvette said. “Not my problem.”

  “You lie about everything,” Sylvie said. “This is definitely your problem now. Or I wouldn’t be here with a gun.”

  “If I had monsters at my beck and call, would I be trying to talk sense into you? Appealing to your better nature while your … friends are killing my people?”

  “Maybe you’re just tapped out, used up all your monster spells,” Sylvie said. “Or maybe Merrow, with his persuasive ways, was your only monster talker. Don’t know. Right now, I don’t care. Shut down the Corrective, Yvette, or I will.”

  Yvette nodded, and Demalion growled. Sylvie echoed his irritation. She knew that gesture. It wasn’t agreement, just Yvette conveying her understanding that this was how it was going to be: that Sylvie was unreasonable. “You don’t want me to do that.”

  “I really do,” Sylvie said.

  “Sylvie—” Demalion said. Warning: Close her mouth, get the job done.

  She kept her eyes, her gun on Yvette, but nodded that she was listening.

  “I don’t think it’s that easy,” Demalion said.

  “She made it; she breaks it—”

  “I don’t think she did. It’s not her spell to break.”

  “Oh, Michael,” Yvette said. Her tone was disappointed and fond at the same time. “This is why I headhunted you for my team all those years ago. Why did you have to change sides? Always so quick to see the problem.”

  “So it’s not her spell,” Sylvie said. “But it’s her coven, her people. She knows how to—”

  “Do you know what powers this spell?” Yvette asked.

  “The two stones,” Sylvie said. They reeked of god-power to her. Strong beyond human skills, despite the witch sigils carved into their surfaces. “The water isn’t just flowing around them. It’s coming from them.”

  “It’s been doing it long enough to wear a deep groove in the stone,” Demalion said. “To make its own path.”

  Sylvie jerked her gaze downward. He was right. The lip and side of the grooves were as smooth as river rocks. The river had made itself at home.

  “Those stone pillars are extraordinarily rare,” Yvette said. “Do you know what they are? Where they come from? What had to be braved to bring them back?”

  Water and memory together gave her the clue, and Sylvie robbed Yvette of the satisfaction of telling her. “They’re from the River Lethe.”

  “Our founder,” Yvette said, “planned it. Dedicated her lover to Hades, sacrificed him, then traveled down to Hades to barter with the god of the dead to bring him back. All a ruse, of course. Hades said no, and she begged at least, let him forget her. Hades acquies
ced. Took them both to the River Lethe, where she stole a pebble from both banks before Hades ushered her out. The god thought he’d won, never thought of her again. She took the stones and ran. It took her twenty years of experimentation and effort to grow them. Another ten to create the Corrective.”

  “It’s the same one,” Sylvie said. She got it now. Yvette’s awe, reluctance, even the fear of the spell she was using. The age of the surroundings, the rarity of the ingredients. The difficulty of the spell … “The very same spell. You never reconstituted it; your people never let it lapse. It’s been running for—”

  “A hundred and seventeen years,” Yvette said. “Long enough for the river to grow along with the stones. For the strength behind it to grow enormous. For it to reach out to any part of the world that we need changed. If you break this spell, the backlash of it will kill me and most likely everyone here.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” Sylvie said.

  * * *

  BEFORE SHE FINISHED SPEAKING, THE ROOM ERUPTED INTO MOVEMENT, their cease-fire broken. Demalion’s free hand latched onto Sylvie’s waist and yanked her aside just as bullets furrowed the space where she’d been.

  Yvette, that liar, had only removed part of the illusions on her guards. No wonder they had stayed as still as they had throughout Yvette and Sylvie’s chatter—too much movement would have revealed the truth. They were holding semiautomatic pistols.

  All of this went through Sylvie’s head even as she was returning fire, even as Demalion hustled them toward the nearest defensible place—ducking into the shadow of a Lethe stone. She fought him. She didn’t want to duck and cover and play at armed groundhog, taking turns shooting at each other. She wanted to take the fight to them. To kill them all. To break the damn Corrective and restore the world to its regularly scheduled way of life. To give Alex her life back.

  She lunged out; Demalion hauled her back. Bullets spattered the Lethe stones, doing no damage at all to them.

  “Would you stop that?”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he spat.

  “Is that foresight or fear?” Sylvie craned her head, trying to keep an eye on the guards, on Yvette. One guard—dark-haired, dark-skinned, dressed to disappear, his gun held loosely but confidently in his hands—near the entryway, blocking their path out. Sylvie almost laughed. Yvette didn’t know her at all if she thought that retreat was on her mind. The guard laid down another line of fire, wasting ammunition. Whatever magics were done here, the Lethe stones weren’t the only things made stronger. All those bullets, and no shrapnel from the walls.

  The second guard—so blond his hair was nearly white—was skirting the wall and the trapped river, trying to come up behind Sylvie and Demalion, trying to put them between two sets of gunfire.

  That wasn’t the real plan, Sylvie thought. The gunmen weren’t even aiming well. They were distraction for Yvette. She was where the real danger lay. Sylvie had faced tougher opponents—Lilith, Odalys, a fledgling god—but Yvette was clever, and a lucky shot could kill Sylvie as easily as a powerful one.

  The less time Yvette had to plan, the better. That in mind, Sylvie shifted forward again, dodged the desultory shooting from the dark guard, and rolled across the unyielding floor with a wince. She came up behind him and kicked out.

  Utterly graceless, still effective. The man stumbled forward a few steps, and Demalion yanked him further off balance, yanked him directly to the edge of the narrow river and over.

  The witch fell just right, slipped into the river. Sylvie had expected him to get wet, splash hip deep or so, and momentarily lose his bearings, maybe even lose his memories. Demalion moved forward as if he expected the same, expected a chance to wrest his gun away.

  The witch hit the water and sank fast and silent. Disappeared, as if the river were the void it resembled. The surface didn’t even change in its slow, oily rippling. Invulnerability talisman or not, he was gone.

  Sylvie and Demalion exchanged appalled glances that said the same thing: Don’t you fall in!

  The second guard let his gun drop, raised his head sharply. “You’re bleeding, Shadows.”

  She felt the sting along her arm where she’d scraped it as she rolled. It didn’t seem newsworthy, but Yvette looked just as stunned. The guard growled low under his breath, began twitching beneath the skin, growing claws and fur and sprouting teeth.

  Sorcerous shape-shifter, Sylvie diagnosed. Those fuckers were hard to put down; they could take a lot of abuse, and they healed fast. Mix that with a talisman that granted invulnerability, and he was going to be difficult.

  “You killed my men,” Yvette said, “and you didn’t take their talismans? Are you that much of a purist that you’d rather die than wear a magical shield?”

  “Nope. Someone else had better uses for them.” She hoped like hell that Zoe and Lupe were wearing them by now. Hoped they were clearing their path out of here. Hoped they’d have enough sense to flee when Marah gave them the word to do so.

  Yvette’s face tightened, showed fine lines like cracks in porcelain. “Marah Stone. I wondered what had become of her. I hoped she’d join us.”

  “Sorry,” Sylvie said. “She’s got plans. They don’t involve you.”

  Demalion shot steadily at the shape-shifter, a repetitive percussion that echoed and echoed against the walls. The man had thrown down his gun, preferring to kill up close and toothy, as so many of the shifting sorcerers did. He kept stalking Demalion, shaking bullets out of his silvery fur, scattering them like overlarge, metallic fleas.

  Yvette shook her head. “They won’t involve you, either. I thought you’d be better than this, Shadows. You came before me, weak?” Yvette held up her hand, fisted it suddenly and tossed the spell at Sylvie. She jerked away, almost made it out of range. Her left hand didn’t, trailed behind her, and Sylvie yelped as the bones in her hand broke.

  She dodged the next spell that Yvette threw; her hand throbbed and throbbed. She felt it swelling and was thankful that it was her left hand. Not her gun hand.

  Even more thankful that for all of Yvette’s skills, she hadn’t managed to get her hands on anything that belonged to Sylvie. A bonebreak spell was hard enough to dodge, but if Yvette had been able to fine-tune it, to use Sylvie’s stolen hair, fingernails, or clothing to home in on her, there would have been no dodging possible.

  As it was, Sylvie was running out of time.

  Shoot her, her little dark voice shouted.

  She hated those damn invulnerability talismans.

  Yvette lined up another blast, and Sylvie leaped over the river, headed back toward the upright Lethe stone. The spell hit her ankle. The joint protested and swelled. Her bones … held this time, having learned the taste of the spell enough to reject it. Magical antibodies for the win, she thought wildly, though her left hand complained.

  Yvette threw a third blast, stronger still, after Sylvie, reaching her just as she ducked behind the Lethe stone. The spell crashed over it, spilling around the sides to reach her. Sylvie felt the shivery malevolence of it vibrate her bones as it passed.

  Shoot her!

  The werewolf’s outraged howl drew her attention, got her back on her feet, peering around the stone pillar; Demalion had the shape-shifter up off the ground, grimacing as the wolf savaged his hip, clawed at his chest. It had to outweigh him, but he took three laboring steps and tossed the wolf into the river. It clawed at the sides of the stony riverbank, never gained traction, and vanished.

  Demalion staggered, leaned over the water, breathing hard. His blood dripped across the floor. Yvette snarled. She raised her hand, and Demalion raised his head, aware of the danger, but—Sylvie saw he couldn’t move. Too exhausted, too sore, too slow …

  Her heart turned over, sick with dread.

  He smiled.

  Shoot her!

  Sylvie put her remaining shots into Yvette; she had never wanted anyone dead as much this woman who threatened to take Demalion from her. Again. Her anger was a rolling,
snake-twisting cloud over her entire body and brain, a spreading, numb rage that reached out and smothered, crushed everything before it. The shots were sharp firecrackers in the sudden darkness, crisp and final.

  Yvette’s fisted hand splayed open. Fell to her side. The bonebreak spell cracked the floor near her feet. Yvette’s other hand fumbled up toward her chest, toward the invulnerability talisman.

  At her touch, while Sylvie’s shots were still echoing, the talisman fell apart, split by Sylvie’s bullets.

  The gun’s not the weapon, Marah had said. You are.

  For the first time, Sylvie understood what that meant. She wasn’t just resistant to magic used against her. She suppressed magic. She killed the unkillable by taking away their magical protection. She made them mortal. Vulnerable. Killable. She was the weapon. Her bullets were the coup de grace. Nothing more.

  Maybe not even that.

  Yvette crumpled, bewilderment frozen on her face. Her last expression. Her plans all come to nothing.

  “Good timing,” Demalion said. He didn’t sound surprised at all.

  She lunged at him, uncertain whether she wanted to kiss him or pummel him senseless. “Bastard,” she snapped. “I thought she was going to kill you.”

  “I knew she wasn’t.”

  Her hands were shaking, both the broken one and the one that held the empty gun. “You’re bleeding all over the place. Do something about that, would you?”

  “I’m all right, Sylvie. I’m all right.” He dragged her close, and she burrowed into him, smelled blood, but his pulse was strong and solid beneath her cheek.

  She shook off her fears and straightened her shoulders. “Yeah. You are.”

  Demalion looked at the liquid flutter of river water, that oily memory sink, and said, “So, I know we don’t trust Yvette’s word, but I’m concerned about the magical backlash. You’re tough, but that’s a century-old spell you’re planning to disrupt—”