Lyn Benedict - Lies & Omens

“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, slipped 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.”

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.

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.”