Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

“I have to work for him. But I’ll make him choke on it before I’m done. For me to do that, I need to know who he is. Where he came from. What his weaknesses are.”

“Okay,” Alex said. “Okay, I can maybe help—” She pulled out her laptop, flipped it open, and said, “I did some preliminary research. I skipped the soul-devourer part. Tierney’s right. That’s a giant dead end. The necromantic community knows he exists but nothing else about him. Hell, turns out they weren’t even sure it was a man, just defaulted to it. So I went back to the simple facts. What you and Tierney got from the symbols: old-fashioned magic, Basque magic, a linkage to alchemy.”

“Alchemy? He disintegrated my gun with a touch.”

“Oh yeah,” Alex said, eyes lighting with wholly inappropriate enthusiasm. “Alchemy’s all about the transformation of one thing to another. Bet your gun didn’t just disintegrate; bet it became some other type of metal first—”

“Alex. He disintegrated my gun . Tell me you got something,” Sylvie said.

“Not something,” Alex said. “But something that might lead to something. A nineteenth-century man they called the Basque Alchemist. Eladio Azpiazu. Supposedly he had the power of a wolf, and he scared his neighbors so bad that rather than drive him out, the town picked up and moved.”

“ Nineteenth century? Not our guy, Alex.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Alex said. “It’s like the Maudits . They seek out apprentices—”

“You say apprentice; I say slave,” Sylvie murmured, but she got the gist. “You think it’s a lineage. A pattern of teaching.”

“Yeah, and a strict one if this modern sorcerer is still using the same techniques as his ancestor. That’d be like me still using quill and ink. It works, but there are better methods now. Why should magic be any different?”

“Anything else?” Sylvie asked. “I’m greedy.”

“One ring-a-ding prize maybe,” Alex said. “I farmed out some of the research. I thought, if the town moved, that would leave a record. Or if the town just disappeared. I know a grad student at UM, a local history buff. She looked into it, confirmed that there was a town that disappeared, and this is the important part—one of the key reasons people left? A series of grisly murders where people were found with their hearts torn out. Sound like the soul-devourer? I’d say that our modern sorcerer was following the family line all the way down.”

“Alex, you’re amazing,” Sylvie said.

“So what’s my prize?”

“More research,” Sylvie said. “Look into his enemy. A sorcerer called Tepé. Tepé cursed him but good. An enmity that strong should draw notice.”

Alex sighed. “Good work makes more work. So damn true.”

Sylvie said, “I strongly doubt that’s his real name, anyway. Sounds more like a handle than a given name. Like . . .” She raised her head. “Like the Ghoul.”

Wales flipped her off as he joined them. He leaned against the doorjamb, and Sylvie waved him in. The landing was narrow, the stairs were steep, and Wales still didn’t look any too steady on his feet.

Alex moved to get out of her seat, and Wales shook his head. His earlier fear had given way to a sullen sort of irritation. He had come upstairs, Sylvie thought, to pick a fight. Give himself a reason to storm out of the office and the city.

Usually, when people wanted a fight, Sylvie was willing to oblige. Not today. She turned her back on Wales, took her seat again, tried for calm. “You going back to the hotel?” she asked.

“Unless you have something else you want me to do today. Boss,” he said.

“Better leave the necromancy be for a bit,” Sylvie said. Wished she hadn’t the minute the last word left her mouth.

“You think?” he snapped. “Want to tell me to not play in traffic, too? Or hey, how about not shooting up?”

“You look tired is all. Not in shape to watch your back.”

Wales shot her a grin that was all teeth, offense, and not a lot of humor. “Guess it’s a good thing I got Marco for that.”

In a hasty attempt to disrupt the argument ready to break out, Alex said, “I checked out Patrice on the way here. She was macking on some goth boy at a coffee shop.” She huffed under her breath, said, “You have to be really dedicated to work full goth gear before 9:00 a.m. Of course, later in the day it’s too hot for that much guyliner—”

“You did what?” Sylvie said.

Alex looked up from her amused memories and blinked. “Um.”

Sylvie took a deep breath, ready to shout, caught sight of Wales’s smirk, and let her breath out. When she did speak, it was far more moderately than her original intention. “So instead of working at home where it’s safe, you went out and chased a dead girl around.”

“I did work at home. Then I hit a dead end, decided to clear my mind, and since you got up in Patrice’s face yesterday—yes, Tierney tattled—”

Sylvie blinked again. When the hell had Alex had time to squeeze in a chat with Wales? But she should know better than to underestimate Alex’s ability to gather information.

“—so I figured you couldn’t follow her around, and she doesn’t know me, so, I sat outside her house and followed her to the coffee shop—”

“Where she hit on a goth boy, got it,” Sylvie said.

“Cute one, too, if you like that type. Long, lanky, the kind of bony shoulder blades that make me think of wings.” Alex’s gaze was resting on Wales’s clavicle, visible through the thin shirt.

Wales’s cheeks darkened steadily, but he said nothing, only hunched his shoulders and made himself small. At least embarrassment had eclipsed his anger.

“Great,” Sylvie said. “She’s got the new life, and now she’s slumming it.”

“Can’t be slumming it too bad,” Alex said. “Not if he’s buying five-dollar coffees and ten-dollar pastries. And they’re planning on clubbing tonight at Caballero, so there goes another chunk of change.”

Sylvie shook her head, disgusted. Patrice offended her on a very simple level. She’d stolen a new life and was doing nothing new with it, tracing the same self-indulgent lifestyle she’d had before.

You could still shoot her, the little dark voice suggested.

Rather than listen to it, Sylvie headed back downstairs.

The sunlight seeped in through the closed blinds, thin lines of brilliant gold that exposed every dust mote in the office and made her sanctuary into a prison of shadowy bars.

Sylvie yanked the blinds open, blinked in the glare, and sent a rude gesture in the direction of the ISI nursing their coffees at the crowded pastry shop across the street. They wanted to watch? Let them.

It was going to be another scorcher. Sylvie hoped Patrice’s goth boy melted and ruined her day. Hell with it, she hoped Patrice melted.

Likelihood was, the only one who’d be suffering from the heat was Sylvie. Odds were, she’d be out pounding the pavement for hours, looking for the black van that the sorcerer had used to take the women away. She envied the cops and their ability to just slap an APB or BOLO or whatever acronym floated their boat on a vehicle.

The idea made her thirsty just thinking on it. She raided the fridge, cracked a water bottle, took a healthy slug of cold—

The pain surprised her. It was sudden, all-encompassing, breathtaking. Like knives lodging in her throat, her stomach, her chest. She let out a strangled cry and found blood speckling her lips. She thrust the bottle away, though she knew it wasn’t to blame.

A spell. Finding its target.

No.

A curse .

Her throat itched, ached, and burned. She couldn’t breathe through the agony of it, found herself crumpling forward, losing all control of her body save the most important one.