by Lyn Benedict
“Find one,” Sylvie said.
He shrugged, and the wreath slipped over shoulders going narrower, less human, shifting back to dolphin. “Sorry. I only know my part. I killed your kind, and I loved it. I’m content. I taught my people how to fight back in a more effective way. It’s funny,” he said again. “Your world is running all over itself, trying to make rules to contain us. To make us play nice. We have no interest in your rules or your wants.”
She shot him in the thigh, knocked him to the muddy ground; he made no real attempt to escape it, only laughed as she stood over him. His laugh sounded nothing like human, a chattering sweep of sound, but the curve to his mouth, the glint in his eyes gave his amusement away, even as he clutched at the bloody wound.
“Tell you this,” he breathed. “Take it as warning or whatever you want. You don’t make Cain’s line feel slighted. Not if you want to live.” He rolled up to his feet, lunged for her, teeth snapping, and she shot him in the head. Right between the eyes as if her sights had never left that spot.
He collapsed, dead, at her feet.
She toed him back into the river, let the water take him down, and headed back up the long slope to Demalion.
“Get an answer?” he asked. His mouth was tight and hard. He’d taken the security feed of Marah and the Encantado together worse than she had. But then, she had never really trusted Marah, and he had trusted Marah with his life. With his precious agency.
“She couldn’t have planned it,” he said, for the third or fourth time today. “She nearly got killed in Chicago along with me. If they were allies—”
“Being allies doesn’t make them friends,” Sylvie said. “One conversation between them, and death and disaster afterward. I don’t think they told each other a lot of details in that time. He may not have known she was headed to Chicago.”
Demalion grimaced, gestured her into the car. “So what do we do? No proof that she wasn’t under his compulsion. You said he enchanted you—Marah’s not as strong.”
“I don’t know,” she said. For a phrase she hated, it was beginning to feel all too familiar. “I do know that we have to move on from this. Monsters and gods and witches aside, Marah’s the one to watch. And we helped put her in power.”
Demalion started the car, the long drive back home. Sylvie rested her gun on her lap and watched the landscape go by. Trees and road and eventually houses and cities. It all looked so normal. But beneath the surface, everything had changed. She wasn’t sure how it was going to work out.
Sylvie’s phone rang, startling her. She’d assumed they were out of range, but it was Alex, working some type of technological miracle.
“Hey,” she said.
“How’s your Portuguese?” Alex asked.
“Nonexistent,” Sylvie said. She laid the phone on the dash between her and Demalion, put it on speaker, caught it when it nearly slid off the dash as Demalion bounced them over a rough section of not-quite-road.
“Demalion?” Alex said.
“I can do Portuguese,” he said. “What’s going on, Alex?”
“The Brazilian government knows you’re in the country; they’d like to speak to you.”
“Why?” Sylvie asked warily. It had been a pain in the ass to get here, harder to arrange for weapons. It was well and good for Marah to say Sylvie didn’t need guns, but Sylvie felt better with one. Didn’t mean she wanted to explain why she was running around with an illegally purchased, illegally carried gun to the Brazilian police.
“They, apparently, have a magical snake infestation. They think, that since you’re already in the country—”
Demalion spoke over Sylvie’s sigh. “Are they paying? How magical?”
“Very well,” Alex said. “Very magical. The snakes are apparently prone to sprouting legs and running up walls. It’s a whole, big mess.”
Sylvie looked across the seat at Demalion. He grinned at her. “What do you say?”
“This is going to be how it is, isn’t it. Our life. Chasing snakes—”
“And getting paid,” Demalion pointed out. “You like that.”
“You like that. Missing your government paycheck?”
“Not in the least,” he said. “Missing being hunted by the government?”
“Maybe a little,” she said.
Alex groaned. “Stop flirting. Jeez. To think I wanted Demalion to come work with us.”
“We’ll take the snakes,” Sylvie said. “Hey, spreading goodwill, right?”
“God, this is going to be a disaster—”
Sylvie disconnected, tucked the phone back in her pocket, and leaned back in the jeep’s seat. This was how it was going to be. Bickering with Demalion. Being bossed around by Alex. Hunting magical snakes that would no doubt turn out to be venomous.
Demalion steered the jeep out of the jungle and back onto the sunlit roadway; Sylvie pulled down her sunglasses and smiled. She could live with this.
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