Lyn Benedict: Lies & Omens

Sylvie had held the god-power for a horrifying minute, had even used it. She still woke from nightmares about those actions: using that kind of power, containing that kind of power—it had made her want to claw her insides out. Repulsive. Repellent. Wrong.

“The new Lilith,” Dunne said thoughtfully. “You replaced her.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’ve heard that.”

Sylvie waited to see if he’d elaborate on the theme. If he’d let slip what being the new Lilith actually meant.

He merely said, “I see.”

“So I’ve been told. You want to tell me what that means?”

“You don’t know?”

“Would I ask if I knew?” Sylvie let all her irritation and frustration come to the surface. She made it a point of not asking things she could find out on her own.

“You’ll figure it out eventually,” he said.

“I’m impatient, sue me,” Sylvie said. “Spit it out, Dunne.”

He stood, rolled his shoulders; the light in the room shivered as if the storm core of him were passing overhead, dimming the real world. “You’re her replacement. You kill things that shouldn’t be killable.”

Sylvie threw her carton of Thai food at him in sheer, sudden rage. He didn’t dodge; the carton replaced itself on the table, not a single noodle spilled. “Look, asshole—” she said, and somehow that was the mistake. Maybe it was leftover cop, reacting to being disrespected, maybe it was his own burst of impatience—he loomed over her and pinned her to her couch with a look.

Thunder rumbled inside her apartment; the smell of cold rain was bright and strong and sharp, laced with the threat of lightning. When she looked up at him, there was nothing human in his shape, only churning cloud.

“You never thought about her at all, did you?” Dunne asked. “You killed her, and you didn’t know her. Did you ever think it strange that she opposed her god so fiercely, acted against him as she could, and was never punished? She birthed monsters to destroy his peoples, and he did nothing. She walked with demons and erased the protective charms men put on their homes—she laughed when the demons crept inside and devoured his blessed children. And he did nothing .”

She coughed, tore her eyes away from the angry, hypnotic surge of storm cloud, and said, “So he has a hands-off policy—”

“He created her. He had a purpose for her. You killed her. Now that purpose is yours. Lilith lived thousands of years and never was called to fulfill her purpose. His purpose. I don’t know what it is, but I bet you won’t like it. Whatever it is, it’s important enough that he let her get away with murder.”

“Stop,” she said. Her heart raced in her chest, painful and panicky. She twisted, tried to escape his psychic grip. “Stop.” She didn’t know what the new Lilith was? Maybe because she’d never wanted to. Maybe it was safer not to know. More bearable.

“You’ll be alive for a very long time, Shadows. Until he has need of you. Or until you’re … replaced by another of her lineage, another shortsighted killer hungry for blood, filled with rage, refusing to bow to anyone.”

“I don’t want it,” she said. Her throat crackled with dryness; her voice disappeared beneath the thunder of his presence.

“Oh, you know that lesson,” he said. “We don’t always get what we want. I wanted a nice, orderly system for meting out justice. I got a Fury-turned-god wreaking havoc.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked. She felt horrifyingly close to tears. Blamed his presence for it, a sort of evil osmosis—the storm core of him drawing her salt tears to the surface. Her entire apartment smelled like a squall at sea.

“Stop her.”

Sylvie laughed, a fierce crow of stunned disbelief. “What, you want me to do the job? She might be a god, but she’s small potatoes compared to you. Deal with her yourself.”

“She’s not mine anymore,” he said. “A pantheon of her own. Not a Fury. If I act against her, it’s war across the heavens. You created her. Stop her. Kill her if you have to.”

“She’s my … friend,” Sylvie said, and surprised herself by meaning it. That knowledge bolstered her, took her out of her own fears. So what if God had a purpose for her. She didn’t have to do it. She didn’t have to do what Dunne wanted, either.

“She’s your responsibility.”

“Fuck you,” Sylvie said.

Dunne rocked back, going human-shaped again. His eyes narrowed; suddenly, he didn’t look as gentle as he usually did in human form. “You want to use her against your enemies.”

“No,” Sylvie said. She crossed her arms over her chest, thought clearly how much she wanted him to go the hell away.

He ignored her, and said, “You already have. You sicced her on the ISI after you disposed of Azpiazu.”

“I asked her to make us an exit,” Sylvie said. “That’s all.”

Dunne flicked his gaze TV-ward. The channels shifted, blurred, landed on a local news station that wasn’t local at all. The banner beneath said it was Channel 8, Dallas/Fort Worth. And it was yesterday’s breaking news. The volume wound up; the newscaster shouted disaster into the room. An entire work force found dead, all asphyxiated at their desks. Forty people.

The news report suggested a gas leak.

“That’s the Dallas ISI,” Dunne said.

“I know that,” Sylvie said. She kept track of their branches, knew the buildings they took over. The Dallas ISI was based out of a lakeside marina. The facade was distinctive, cement slabbed with a faded trio of white sails against blue waves. The boats slipped there looked normal but all belonged to the government. Expensive camouflage.

The TV flickered, shifted again. “How about this one? I know you recognize it. Or what’s left of it.”

She didn’t at first. It was a picture as horrible and meaningless to her as a foreign disaster—all broken slabs of beige stone, glittering with dusty glass, crawling with reflected emergency lights and first responders. It was the cops’ caps that tipped her off, sparked recognition out of anonymity: Chicago cops in late-afternoon sunlight. The video clips were choppy, cameras held by a series of unsteady hands before the professionals arrived. Flashes of gold light flared like special effects every so often, the dust catching and reflecting the lights.

The broken walls weren’t beige; they were granite covered with sand. The skyscrapers to either side, though damaged, were familiar enough. The collapsed building was the Chicago ISI. Where she had killed Lilith. Where a resurrected Demalion worked.

The announcers were reading off death tolls like ghouls, adding new bodies on a ticker in the corner of the screen. Seventy-six dead. No, seventy-nine. No, eighty-three.

A pained, broken breath overrode the announcers. It took her a moment to realize it had been hers. Not possible. She’d talked to him just two days prior, and he’d been too run off his feet for anything more than just a hi, miss you, wish you were here, sorry we fought . Hadn’t even been long enough to argue over anything.

“Do you see?” Dunne said.

She scrubbed hard at her blurring eyes, understood what he was implying and the sheer manipulative gall of it scoured away her fear and pain. “You’re a bastard and a liar,” she said, couldn’t muster enough strength to make it more than a furious whisper. “ Erinya didn’t do this.”

It wasn’t the Fury’s style. Erinya loved the visceral taste of battle. She wouldn’t kill by alleged gas, wouldn’t drop a building on her foes. She’d wade through their blood or consider it not worth doing.

“No,” he admitted. “But she could have. You sent her after the ISI. She’s cunning in her own way, could easily decide that your command not to hurt Demalion was overridden by your desire to hurt the ISI. While she might be a small god comparatively, the world’s still going to bend to her will the longer she lingers in it.”