Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

“Charming,” Sylvie said.

She leaned her cheek against the air-cooled window, closed her eyes.

“Something wrong?” Wales asked. He sounded about ready to drag her back inside the clinic.

“Just . . . surprised I guess. Pins and poppets are messy and old-fashioned. Odalys likes lethal. But she also likes subtle. Low-profile.”

“She’s in jail,” Wales said. “And she’s a snob. That kind of woman loses friends fast. She might not have a lot of choice for allies.”

It made sense. Made the inexplicable less so. “Hey, Tex?”

“Yeah?”

“Get out of my seat.”

Once they’d traded places, Sylvie said, “Hotel for you?”

“Not like I have anyplace else to be. Not like I need to find a new apartment or anything.”

“You don’t want to look for one now, anyway,” Sylvie said. “Wait a few days. The ISI’s attention span isn’t that long if you’re not me.” She found a sudden laugh in her throat, black humor forcing its way out.

He shot her a questioning glance.

“Just . . . I always knew they’d sit and watch while I died. Lazy bastards.” Her stomach ached dully, kept her amusement brief and bleak. She hoped that Demalion had managed to get the word out. Her life would be just that much easier if she didn’t have to worry about Odalys’s attempts to kill her every few hours or so. Sylvie didn’t mind a challenge, but she had five women depending on her.

“Don’t suppose you know any defensive magic,” Sylvie said.

Wales shook his head. “Marco mostly takes care of that for me. Shouldn’t have pissed off your witchy friend.”

Sylvie chewed on her lip. She was bad at groveling. Even if she went to Zoe instead of Val, there was no guarantee that Zoe had learned enough magic to make herself useful.

Once she’s brought in, her little dark voice suggested, it can’t be undone.

She turned her attention to the traffic. No. No to groveling. No to asking her baby sister for aid. For now, she’d rely on the simplest method of survival. Keep moving. Make herself hard to predict, hard to hit.

Steer clear of the office, her home. Wales was going to have a bunk mate in his hotel-room squat. As if tuned in to her thoughts, he said, “If you come knocking tonight, bring dinner.”

“I think I might be late,” she said. Odalys was out of her reach; she had no leads on how to find the soul-devourer, much less fight him. Tepé was still an utter blank, and maybe not even in town yet. But Patrice was, and Sylvie—thanks to Alex—knew where the woman planned to spend her evening.

She dropped Wales off at the hotel, headed to her parents’ home. If she was going out, and her apartment was a potential minefield, she was raiding Zoe’s closet.

An hour later, she looked into the mirror, grimaced, and called it the best of the lot. Black slacks, boot cut, the hem ripped loose to make up for the extra inch or two Sylvie had on Zoe. One of her sister’s tank tops—black, shiny, stretchy, but not too strappy. Sturdy enough in a fight.

She found a leather jacket lurking in the back of her sister’s color-coded, season-sorted closet, and pulled it out with an appreciative smile. Not Zoe’s usual taste at all. The leather was dark red, but the cut skewed motorcycle instead of fashion plate. Sylvie shrugged it on, strapped the SOB holster back on, checked the look, and called it done.

Caught in the fragrance of her sister’s room—Chanel and cosmetics and the tiniest lingering hint of rot from her sister’s foray into necromancy—it suddenly felt intolerable that she hadn’t spoken to Zoe. Hell, she hadn’t even heard back from Val about her warning.

She dialed Zoe, got voice mail, and called Val, expecting more of the same. Surprisingly, Val picked up. “Your sister’s fine,” she said. “I confiscated her phone so she’d stop texting her boyfriend while I was trying to explain magic to her.”

“Of course she was,” Sylvie said. “Where’d she find this one—”

“Sylvie. Stop calling. She’s fine. Stop calling. ” Val disconnected. Apparently, answering the phone didn’t mean Val and she were friends again, just shared a weird sort of custody over Zoe.

An hour later, she was parking her truck on the streets outside Caballero. It was early still, as these things went, but she’d prefer to be in already when Patrice came.

She forked over a cover charge and headed in. Caballero had started out as a gay club but had changed over, slowly but surely, to a goth dive with a steady flow of European-styled heavy metal. Patrice was definitely slumming. Rich girls like Bella Alvarez, even while underage, frequented high-end clubs with long lines and bouncers that were there primarily to play fashion police. Rich girls like Bella Alvarez went to clubs where the clothes were Miu Miu, not Hot Topic.

At Caballero, Sylvie got waved in without even a sneer for her scuffed-up Docs. She found a decent vantage point and waited. She saw the goth boy Alex had mentioned first; he was hard to miss, even in a like-minded crowd. His hair, dead black, was plumed off his skull in a series of fluffy spikes that seemed more akin to feathers than human hair. Dead white skin, red stripe across his eyes—she almost missed Patrice tucked into his side. He felt her attention, winked, and nipped Patrice’s neck with cheesy white vampire veneers. He worried at the ruby beads on her earring, and Patrice frowned.

Sylvie’s hatred for Patrice kicked up another notch. Patrice had cheated death, and now she played with would-be vampires.

Patrice pushed him off with an irritated hand, saw Sylvie, and locked up.

Sylvie slunk toward Patrice, taking advantage of the crowd hemming her in, and grinned, trying to show as many teeth as Patrice’s pet goth did. For some reason, Patrice didn’t find the effect as pleasing in Sylvie’s mouth.

She clawed at her goth boy’s leather jacket, jerked backward, and Sylvie’s smile faltered. This was more than concern. It was shock and panic.

It was surprise that Sylvie was alive.

It was awareness that she shouldn’t be.

It was fear .

Sylvie laughed, loud and free and angry. “I blamed Odalys for it all, you know,” she said. “The magical attacks as well as the physical. But it was you who set the witch on me, wasn’t it. Tell me, were the pins your idea? Did you want to make me hurt?”

Goth boy laughed. “I like her, Bella my Bella. She’s fierce. Can we bring her home with us tonight?” He ran black-painted nails up under Patrice’s lacy black blouse, showed Sylvie that Patrice wore a belly chain, strung with silver charms. Magical or mundane?

Patrice slapped at his hands, her nails raking his skin, pinned by the crowd that held her in Sylvie’s space. She backed up, and Sylvie closed the space between them, got her gun out, pressed it just under the curve of Patrice’s rib cage.

Pushing things, she thought. That restraining order was going to be a sure thing at this rate. But the crowd was tight, and visibility was poor. The only witness was the goth boy, and his pupils were wider, blacker than even the dim club light could account for. Stoned close to insensible.

“Usually, I warn people to stay away from me and mine,” Sylvie said. “But I’m not giving you that option. I will find a way to rip you out of that body.”

The goth boy laughed into Patrice’s teased hair, inadvertently pressing Patrice closer to Sylvie and her gun. “So tough,” he giggled. The woman was shaking, fine tremors that traveled through metal and stirred Sylvie’s predatory nature.

“Not if you’re dead first,” Patrice said. “You’ve been lucky so far. How long do you think you can keep it up?” Her trembling was rage, not fear. Not even rage. Outrage. The rich-old-woman personality coming out, furious that someone would dare question her.