Lyn Benedict - Lies & Omens

“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, and 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.

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.