Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

They sprang apart. Sylvie twitched the gun into a proper grip. He canted a glance at the destroyed door, at her gun a few feet away from him; he looked like he was about to make a judgment call. Could he finish the job before the police arrived?

Sylvie made a judgment call of her own.

She pulled the trigger. He crashed backward—finally out of her apartment. She followed him, gun ready. If he wasn’t down, she’d have no problem shooting him again.

Dark blood bubbled through his T-shirt. Not arterial, but not insignificant. His eyes were closed, his features drawn tight with pain and shock, aging him.

Now that she had a chance to assess instead of react, she thought he was of the same ilk that had attacked Wales: youngish, dressed to blend in, but without even a protective charm to his name. Guess that might have broken the illusion if she’d been trapped in it.

Her downstairs neighbor, a college student named Javier, staggered up the stairs. Beer night with his buds, she thought. And yeah, there was the milling of footsteps beneath, young men who weren’t sure they wanted to get involved beyond calling 911.

He gaped at her. “You all right? He all right?” He didn’t wait for an answer but looked down at the gunman. “Should we try to stop the bleeding or something?”

“If you want,” Sylvie said. “He attacked me. I’m not feeling forgiving enough to play paramedic.”

Javier dithered, and she said, “Why don’t you check on Christina? He came out of her apartment.” She jerked her chin in that direction, and he obeyed. Shocked but willing. A good kid.

Sylvie crouched down beside the gunman. “Who sent you?”

He groaned, turned his head, his breathing labored and thick.

“Confession’s good for the soul,” she said. “Think about it. You wake up in the hospital, talk to the cops. Of course, if you talk to me, your odds of reaching the hospital alive go up.” She tapped the gun muzzle against his shoulder; his eyes widened.

“I don’t—”

Sylvie said, “I’m not playing. And you didn’t know what you were getting into. I’ve killed worse than you and gone to sleep with a smile—”

“Odalys,” he said. “I used to smuggle things into the country for her. She asked me to do this.”

“Good,” she said. “Just remember to tell that to the cops when they ask.”

She dropped the gun when the police lights flashed into the lot and resigned herself to another couple of hours before she got that shower she wanted.

MIDNIGHT HAD COME AND GONE BEFORE SHE WAS DONE ANSWERING the police questions. Judicious use of Adelio Suarez’s name, and the clear evidence against the gunman—a shattered door, the traumatized neighbor who’d unwillingly hosted the bastard until Sylvie got home—meant Sylvie got to answer questions in the dubious comfort of her own apartment.

She gave the police a list of every possible place she could be reached in the near future and waved them goodbye. Ten minutes after that, she helped apartment maintenance nail plywood sheets over the gaping hole in the door and headed back out into the night.

Alex would open her doors to Sylvie; but then, the options were sharing her couch with the German shepherd who drooled or the futon with Alex, who kicked and twitched, as active in her sleep as she was during the day.

She called Wales. “Tell me you snuck into a hotel room with two beds.”

He groaned protest but gave her the address and room number.

Thirty minutes later, she was pulling into one of the Holiday Inn Expresses that dotted the Florida landscape. Tapping on his door yielded a grumble and a series of oddly careful footsteps.

He opened the door, leaned across it, blocking her entrance, and said, “I could have been sleeping, y’know.”

“What kind of necromancer sleeps at night? Isn’t that against union rules or something?” she asked. She squeezed in, blinked in the dimness, took in the scent of old tallow and spices. Not the usual hotel scent. Wales had been playing with the occult in the dark like the good, creepy Ghoul he was. “Tell me the room has a coffeepot.”

“Yeah.”

She lingered in the little square space beyond the door, trying to figure if she really wanted Wales for a roommate. Even for a night. If it had been a suite, maybe. “You know, if you’re going to sneak into a hotel, why not pick something nicer?”

“Reservations,” he said. “Theirs, not mine. I took this room out of the system, but at an expensive hotel, someone would throw a stink. More odds of discovery.”

“Surprisingly sensible,” she said. “Do you still have clean towels?”

He flipped on the light, looking at her. “D’you have a black eye?”

She touched her face; it wasn’t particularly tender. “Just dirt, I think. Bruised ribs, shoulder, and hip, though. Odalys sent one of her bullyboys to my home. Kicked my door in.”

“You shoot him, too?” Wales grinned.

“Yeah.”

He stopped smiling. “Seriously? I thought your rep was all about shooting monsters. Not people. That’s two in one day, Sylvie.”

“I’ve learned to make exceptions,” she said. Sylvie ducked under his arm and trespassed. She stopped two steps later and looked at the room. Basic layout—two beds, dresser, TV, a table, and two chairs—except Wales had spent some time rearranging. The chairs were piled on the dresser, a tangle of legs, and the table was squished into the narrow space between the second bed and the wall, clearing a space near the window.

He’d also let the Hands out of their box. He’d made a circle of them, palms up, and stippled them with some pungent herbal ash that made Sylvie’s nose wrinkle and her lungs itch as she approached.

“Pennyroyal,” he said. “Helps ward off curses. Be a hell of a thing if I went to all that trouble to get Jennifer back here, and it killed me.”

“I thought you were going to talk to her, not drag her back. Just talk.”

Wales shifted, antsy under his skin. “I wish. If I were wanting to know about her past, what her favorite color was, her best memory—I’d just ask. But death’s traumatic as hell no matter how it happens. We don’t like to have our toys taken from us, and life’s about the biggest toy there is.”

“And trauma leads to muddled thinking,” Sylvie interrupted.

“Especially when what you’re wanting to ask about is their death. Then it’s all metaphor and scrambled words. Like talking to someone who got their Happy Meal with a side order of LSD. If I want to learn anything from her death, she’s gotta come back. And that requires more than a bit of thought.”

“Plus backup, or are you just using the Hands as ashtrays?”

Wales snorted. “Martha Stewart would have my hide. Nah, they’re going to be a fence of sorts. Hem her in. In case she tries to escape.”

Sylvie edged past the piled-up furniture, crawled onto one of the beds. Necromancy. A lovely way to victimize the dead. But they needed more to go on. As if he had had this same argument with himself, Wales said, “If she could understand what was at stake, she’d want to help us. Save the other women.”

“That’s sweet,” Sylvie said. “But I’ve always found that human nature involves a lot of ‘Fuck you, I’ve got mine.’ ”

Wales cracked a thin smile. “Truth. Are you gonna hang around for this shindig?”

“Nowhere else to go,” Sylvie said. The bed was comfortable beneath her. She might have won her battle with her attacker, been checked over by the EMTs and pronounced okay, but her side ached, her hands ached, and she thought there might still be splinters in her hair from the bullet hitting the door frame. Here was good. Even if it meant playing witness to coercive magic.