Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

Sylvie grimaced. “Ugly.”

“It gets worse. I think I know who’s doing it. Except I never thought he was real. He’s a sorcerer’s bogeyman. The soul-devourer.”

“The soul-devourer?” Sylvie repeated. “You’ve seen this before?”

“Not this; if it were this, I would have said at the scene. But it reminded me of something. Got back, started looking at the symbols, and it twigged. There was a kill zone in the Louisiana bayou. A pile of women’s bodies found, their hearts torn out. Some local sorcerers took a look but said they couldn’t even summon the murdered women’s ghosts. That their souls were—”

“Devoured, got it,” Sylvie said.

“I remember that,” Alex said. “That was just after Katrina. They thought it was a serial killer.”

“Serial killer, sorcerer, potato, potahto,” Sylvie said. “Where’s the link, Tex? Our women aren’t dead.”

“There were symbols carved into the flesh,” Wales said. “The police started asking around. And in Louisiana, they don’t make any nonsense about asking the magical folk. If this binding spell is truly a filtering system, the last step would be to kill the women.”

“And steal, bind, or devour their souls,” Sylvie said, flatly. Her shoulders felt heavy, her breath leaden. She loathed magic. Loathed necromancy, which denied the dead even their final rest. “Don’t suppose you can fix it, now that you’ve recognized it? Can you call for help from the others in the community? Your good necromancers?”

“They’d be more like to never speak to me again if I brought them to the soul-devourer’s attention. And if I mess with his spell, believe me, I’ll be a shining beacon for him.”

“Can you do it? Unbind the women before they wither away or get dragged off to have their hearts yanked out?”

Wales lifted a single shoulder, his gaze avoiding both Sylvie and Alex. “No. Maybe? I might be able to slip each of them out of the binding. Thing is, breaking the stasis doesn’t mean I can free them from the power pouring into them. Or the power from changing within them. Those symbols were carved into their skins. They’re black holes for the power.”

“I’m lost,” Alex said. “Who’s pouring all the power into them? Why?”

“It’s a curse,” Sylvie said.

Wales raised his head, caught by surprise, and his eyes were wary and wide. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s my thought. The blinding spell? The soul-devourer is putting some serious effort into hiding his presence. Which implies—”

“Someone’s putting nearly an equal amount into finding him,” Alex said, pleased with herself. Then her triumphant expression froze, faded. “Wait. The soul-devourer’s a sorcerer’s bogeyman.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s hiding from someone his equal or worse?”

“Got it in one,” Wales said. “We’ve just stepped into a grudge match between seriously amped sorcerers, and I for one would like to go home and beef up my security.”

“You moved out of your apartment,” Sylvie reminded him. “You’re homeless.”

“That’s what hotels are for,” he said. “I’ll call you if I get any leads.” He collected his computer, a change of clothes, the box with the Hands, and headed for the door.

“Hey, Wales,” she said.

He looked back, raised a shoulder. “Yeah?”

Sylvie said, “The ghost girl—Jennifer Costas. She’d be able to tell you more, don’t you think? Who’s hunting him? Why? If you can get her to calm down.”

“Yeah,” Wales said. “She’d know. Guess I’m going to be talking to her tonight.” He didn’t look happy about it, his shoulders stiff, his arms tightening about his boxes so hard the cardboard dented.

Sylvie didn’t feel that good herself. Jennifer Costas should be on her way to her afterlife, claimed by one god or another, whisked away from mortal concerns, and Sylvie kept conspiring to keep her from her rest.

“Wales?”

“What?” he snapped.

“You’re gonna pay for the hotel room, right?”

“You gonna pay me now?”

She hesitated.

“Yeah. Thought as much. Besides, I prefer to stay under the radar,” he said. “And the Hands need to be fed.” At her grimace, he said, “Don’t ask if you don’t want to be told.”

She flipped the latch after him and took his place on the couch.

Alex perched on the desk, and said, “Soul-devourer? That really doesn’t sound good.”

“A necromancer so secretive and vile that the other necromancers won’t name him? Not good is an understatement. Christ,” she muttered. “I hate necromancers.”

“Not Tierney,” Alex said. “He’s helping. He helped you earlier, and he’s helping you now—”

“Ease off,” Sylvie said. “I’m not bad-mouthing him. He’s all right. For a ghoul.”

“I think he’s sweet,” Alex said.

Sylvie said, “Alex? Just hold off on falling for him until we get this resolved? He’s twitchy. You jump him, he’s gonna run. Let’s finish the case first.”

Alex grinned. “Can’t be too long. You guys have a plan.”

“Plans so rarely survive contact with the real world,” she said. She poked listlessly at her sandwich. It was tasty, but she lacked the appetite now. Wales’s pulling the ghost back was dangerous, even if he hadn’t made a big deal of it. Dangerous and repugnant. And necessary.

Sylvie’s thoughts circled. When did necessary stop being an acceptable excuse? When did the means stop justifying the end?

Her little dark voice growled, Someone has to do what’s needed.

“So I called Demalion,” Alex said, and successfully derailed Sylvie’s morbid speculation. She swallowed the first thing that came to mind, the eager question of How was he?

“He going to help with the Odalys issue?” Sylvie sat up on the couch. Alex fidgeted, her gaze on her brightly colored sandals.

“Sort of,” she said, when Sylvie let the silence linger.

“Sort of?”

“He wants you to call and ask,” Alex said.

Sylvie let her breath out. “Well, I guess I don’t need to ask you how he’s doing. That’s classic Demalion.” Her traitorous heart jumped in her chest at the idea of talking to him. Anxiety, excitement, something of both. She dragged herself off the couch, headed up the stairs for dubious privacy.

She closed the door to her private office, sat down, and stared at her phone for a long while, then dialed. The phone rang, and she was concentrating so hard on her lines that she forgot what his would be.

“Wright.” The voice was familiar and not. Demalion’s cadence in Wright’s tenor. It twisted her stomach and made her mute.

“Alex?” he said, then more surely, “Sylvie.”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

A breath let out, a rush of relief in her ear. “I wasn’t sure you’d call.”

“You basically blackmailed me into it,” she said. And maybe this wasn’t so hard after all. They were falling right back into their usual patterns.

“I know you, Syl. You were going to try to cut me off while I . . . accustomed myself to a new life, then you’d get weird and decide it was better not to call. And time would keep passing.”

A smile tugged at her lips, warmed her from the inside out. “You learn all that in high school? Either you had a lot of bad breakups, or you didn’t have any.”

“Hey,” he said, “I was suave for my age. Very. You can check my yearbook out if you want.” The background noise around him swelled: people shouting suddenly, a fight going from zero to sixty and ending just as fast.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Police station,” he said. “Seemed simplest to just walk Wright’s beat for a while. Gets me out of the apartment anyway. Gives me an excuse to stay late.”