Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

The world erupted into a scouring riot of sand devils stinging her flesh, stirring into her lungs, her eyes—she blinked furiously, let the voice chastise her into seeing the truth. It was an illusion, only an illusion.

And she didn’t give in to illusion.

She cleared her sight, found the sorcerer within arm’s distance. She threw herself backward, avoided the claws coming at her face, but his other hand, seemingly human, struck her gun. It crumbled beneath her grip, the metal gone friable, pattering into the sand.

Not an illusion this time.

She kicked back, got herself out of his reach, panting, reaching for a fist-sized stone, for a branch, for anything she could use against him.

He breathed hard, contorted, his entire shape changing, warping. Cloth ripped, that fancy suit giving at the seams. Going monster. Maybe she’d hit him, or maybe the spell was weakened by whatever he’d done to allow the women to be moved.

She surged to her feet. Grabbed Wales’s shoulder, tried to drag him to his feet. If she could get him to the van, get behind the wheel—

The sorcerer leaped between her and the van, more monster than man, bulked to twice his original size, mouth distended by teeth better suited to a saber-tooth, piebald fur of different lengths and textures poking through. He drooled, growled, blocked her path. There just wasn’t room on the narrow road, and Wales was deadweight in her grip, a reminder of how hard the sorcerer could hit.

He sucked in a breath that sounded like the final rale of a dying man, then slowly, painfully, returned to human form. He patted his hair, smoothing it into place, a tiny vanity.

“I don’t like the deal you offered,” he said. It started out distorted, as alien as a voice synthesizer, and ended the same smooth baritone he’d had before. His internals slower to recover from shape-shifting than his externals? Or was it vanity again, the sorcerer’s priority. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme, she supposed, but it helped cement in her mind the kind of man he was.

“I don’t like dealing with sorcerers,” she said. “You’re lucky it was as generous as it was.”

“Still, you’re open to dealing,” he said. “Which is more than you could say about the first Lilith. That woman was rabid in her focus.”

“Maybe she just didn’t like men who used power as a weapon to oppress innocents,” Sylvie said. Her voice was strung tight; nothing good ever came of being compared to Lilith. Much less being called the new Lilith. “I think you’ll find I have more than a few things in common with her. I don’t kowtow, I don’t play nice, and I have a bad attitude.”

“And you were created to kill the unkillable. Believe me, I know what you’re capable of. I’m depending on it.” He seemed wary and tense behind that ever-present smirk. He rolled his shoulders; his skin rolled with them, a blurring of his features, an unnatural distortion that turned her stomach. She’d seen werewolves shift; she’d seen the furies shift shape. They had been alien and strange, but they had their own beauty. This—whatever it was that roiled his skin—was nothing but ugliness. He managed to hold back the monster this time.

“Still, I believe we can find a way to agree,” he said. “You want the women freed? I want to be freed.”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘freed’?”

“I want you to break a curse for me. I’m not unreasonable. Just doing the best I can to stay alive.” His teeth were too long, forcing his lip into a false pout. He shook his head, turned purely human again.

“I’d be more likely to spit on you,” she said. “I don’t care about your curse. I bet you deserve it.”

Wales groaned, drawing her attention. His long limbs flailed briefly.

“You all right there, Tex?”

“I’m facedown in a swamp,” he muttered. “You get the bad guy yet?”

“Working on it,” Sylvie said. Working on it with no gun, no nothing.

“Work faster.” He pushed himself up to a crouch; his face was swelling, and blood masked his jaw and mouth. Daylight didn’t erase the horror-movie look. She winced.

The sorcerer growled. “You will pay attention to me.”

“Only if you say something I want to hear,” Sylvie said. “Release the women, and I might be willing to take your case. You know. Maybe next year. Maybe not.”

He growled, fury twisting his handsome face into a gargoyle’s mask. “If you don’t help me, those women are ash. The curse you don’t care about will ensure that. Do I have your attention now? If you want to save them, you’ll have to save me first.”

The sorcerer had enough sense to finally dim his smile when she didn’t immediately shoot him down. Enough sense to try to hide his triumph when she said, “A curse,” in a bid for more information. She wasn’t going to work for him. But she needed to know what she was up against.

A few feet from her, Wales sat up, his expression full of furious focus, even while his eyes were glazing over. That blow the sorcerer had dealt him had been a hard one, enough to knock him out. Concussion, she diagnosed. She was just lucky he wasn’t puking his guts out. Instead, he was doing his best to follow along, doing his best to help her out. Wales was tougher than she’d given him credit for.

“Get on with it. Tell me about the curse. Tell me what it is.” Her teeth wanted to chatter; she felt cold to her bones. She wanted to blame it on Marco, but there was a lacy pattern of frost forming over the puddle that Wales was sitting in. And the blood on his lacerated cheek was fading, wiped away in careful, invisible strokes. Marco was otherwise occupied.

“It starts, as so many of these things do, with an accident. I killed the wrong man.”

“He tripped and fell on your spell?”

That wash of anger on his face again, and he hissed, “Don’t you presume to judge me, Lilith. If you had no blood on your hands, you wouldn’t be fit to be her successor.”

“But you’re the one who needs something from me. I get to judge,” she said. “Deal with it.”

“I killed a man with a powerful friend,” the sorcerer said. “He cursed me.”

“If he cursed you ,” Wales said, “why are the women the ones getting hurt?” He was tracking better than Sylvie had thought, enough that he wasn’t going to let the sorcerer slip that one by.

“I am a shape-shifter,” the sorcerer declared. “I have the power to alter my shape, to take on the guise of a bear, a wolf, a great cat.”

Sylvie scoffed. “Liar. You’re no shape-shifter, and I’m not that new to this game. You’re a human sorcerer who stole the power by killing true shape-shifters. So tell me, which one had the powerful friend? Bear, wolf, cat?”

He ignored her. “The cowardly sorcerer refused to fight me face-to-face. Instead, he cursed me with the inability to control my form. I am become a monster.”

“Ugly, too,” Sylvie said. She grinned when his face went scarlet. If he needed her, she could make him sorry for it.

His lip drew up, and he took a deliberate step toward Wales. “I might require your aid, but his—” He held up his human hand in threat. Should have been less intimidating than the bloodstained claws, but Sylvie’s disintegrated gun argued that even a single touch could be deadly.

“Fine,” Sylvie said. “Cut to the chase. What do you want me to do? Find this sorcerer of yours and bring you his head?”

A hot light burned behind his eyes, a hunger she could feel. Wales hissed, a warning sound that she didn’t need. The sorcerer made her want to pump his skull so full of bullets that it could be used as a rattle.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, “but it would be enjoyable. All you need to do is . . . convince him to lift the curse. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how to convince him.” He gave her a long once-over, gaze traveling toes to crown, and leered.