Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

AS HOT AS SHE WAS TO FIND CACHITA, SHAKE SOME ANSWERS FROM the woman, Sylvie had to make a stop first. She was out of ammo. Not that it had done any good with Azpiazu, but it was the principle of the thing. An empty gun was a broken tool.

The office safe yielded the bullets she wanted. She sat at her desk, slotting the clip in, listening to her little dark voice purring in contentment, when the sound of glass cracking reached her.

The downstairs window?

Not loud enough.

The front door.

Which meant it wasn’t a car-spun rock making an unlucky impact.

Sylvie looked at her upper windows and thought, not for the first time, that she really needed a back exit.

Instead, she eased herself onto the narrow landing, keeping to the shadows, peered downstairs. Movement, a long, supple shape slipping out of her visual range, leaving a drifting voice behind. “Don’t be like that, Shadows. Come on down! Patrice wants to talk to you.”

The goth boy-witch, Aron.

Sylvie felt a peculiar triumph twisting her mouth. Patrice had actually done her a favor. Broken doorway, trespassing, and threatening her—Sylvie could shoot and claim self-defense.

She slipped down the stairs, bracing herself against the rail, hunching low, gun in hand. Aron launched himself at her, a surprisingly physical attack for a witch, and they tumbled over each other, Sylvie kicking away, firing blind.

The window spider-cracked, her bullet dimpling the center of it. Aron laughed in her face, said, “Are we having fun yet?” and leaped away. “Patrice is waiting.”

He darted through the broken door, and Sylvie wiped the blood from her split lip, hesitating only briefly before bolting after him.

Foolish, her little dark voice hissed. Aron wasn’t a normal witch, all talk and sneakiness. Aron, Sylvie thought, was crazy.

Ahead of her, Aron paused to wave—encouragement, a taunt, god only knew—and detoured from the main drag toward the oceanfront. Sylvie moved steadily after him, dodging joggers, vendors setting up, tourists looking shocked awake, and her mind noted that this wasn’t right. A man running down the street, chased by a woman with a gun? No one was noticing them at all.

Witch, she reminded herself. Their invisibility some type of elaborate spell, triggered when they touched.

Witch? her dark voice echoed. It didn’t sound certain. She slowed her steps. They’d tangled in the nightclub, and she’d felt the burn of magic against her skin, strong and sharp, an electrical current dancing through her bones.

His laughter drifted back, edgy and close to manic, deep-toned like the roar of the surf.

Seeking a confrontation.

Trap, her little voice said.

No duh, she thought. She slowed her chase, trying to figure this out. It felt . . . strange. Her brain said trap. Her instincts said it wasn’t that clear-cut.

They’d tumbled against each other in her office, and that magical burn still lingered, sensitizing her nerves. Either every piece of tacky goth jewelry he wore was laced with spells, or there was something more here.

A gaggle of tourists wandered down the shady path toward the sea, putting themselves between Sylvie and her target, unaware of either of them. Aron, a black streak against the sun-dazzled sea, beckoned Sylvie on.

Sylvie let her gun hand slacken, slowed her pace to a bare crawl, giving the tourists the chance to get out of the way. But instead of moving on, the tourists, two men, two women, an assortment of bickering teens, swayed in her wake like driftwood on the tide and ended up following her toward Aron.

“Why don’t you stretch yourself?” she said. “Use some of that spellwork to clear us some space.” She needed to get the tourists gone.

He grinned back, a slow smile. “Nah. I like ’em. Keeps you on your best behavior.”

Kept her gun useless. With this much magic in the air, Sylvie was loath to just start shooting. She’d have to have the barrel snugged up against Aron before she fired it, and she doubted he’d allow it.

“So Patrice let you off your leash? I thought you were only her bodyguard. Not her attack dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog,” he said, his grin fading.

That hot temper, that fierce rebuttal, they dredged something like memory out of her, woke a vague sense of déjà vu. “Patrice sent you after me. You do as you’re told.”

He shook his head. “Only sometimes. Only when it’s right.”

“Enough talk, Aron,” Patrice said. She stepped out of tree shadow, petulant and puffy-eyed. A week in Bella’s body, and she was using it harder than Bella ever had. It looked like she’d aged five years. A corrupt spirit corrupting what it had claimed.

“Patrice,” Sylvie said. “Looking tired. Life not as easy as you thought?”

“Aron, kill her already,” Patrice said.

Aron’s feverish gaze ran across Sylvie’s skin, shoulders to toes and back up again. “You sure?”

Sylvie, clenched in readiness to fight back, to flee a spell or another attack, to crack the morning open with bullet fire, felt her body jerk in shock.

Patrice twitched also, a bizarre body echo. “Of course I’m sure! I paid you to—”

Aron’s chest shifted, moving fast with his quickening breath. “I know. I just thought. Sometimes, there are things you want to do yourself. For the satisfaction of it. No matter who you’ve hired.”

Patrice’s expression was pure distaste and Sylvie found herself laughing, hard-edged and furious. “You killed for that body, and now you won’t even fight to defend it? Afraid of scratching the finish? Or are you afraid you don’t have what it takes?”

Her voice was shrieking warning; this was not how any confrontation with a bad-magic witch was supposed to go.

“Kill her now, Aron.”

Aron hesitated, his eyes bright on Sylvie’s, amused still. “What do you think, Shadows? You think you can get to her before I get to you?” There was a hunger in his voice, a fierce vibration that suggested this was what he’d wanted all along: some type of cage match that he could enjoy.

“I can try,” Sylvie said, moving even as she spoke, heading straight for Patrice. Hesitation was fatal, no matter the situation. She aimed—sighting at Patrice’s startled face—pulled the trigger. The sound was loud, louder than their voices had been. It cracked the illusion around them. The tourists scattered like a flock of wild birds, still blind to the players, but not to the danger. One of them cried out, clapped a hand over her calf.

Bullet wound.

Patrice simpered at Sylvie, but her eyes showed the whites all around. Her hand clutched nervously at one of her oversized earrings.

Protection charm.

Deflection.

Sylvie had just shot the tourist.

Fuck.

But Patrice had betrayed herself with that one gesture—showing Sylvie where her protection lay. Sylvie tackled Patrice, slapped her hand over the earring, and yanked at it.

It didn’t come off; the flesh around it didn’t yield. Invulnerability, then.

Aron began to whisper, his husky voice drawing tighter, lighter, and strangely familiar. A chant. A spell. Something. It lacked the focused energy she had come to expect from magical workings, but it diverted the attention Sylvie’s shot had drawn.

Patrice squalled like a skinned cat, shrieking Aron’s name. He broke off the chant and threw himself into the battle.

He wasn’t a witch, Sylvie realized abruptly, taking the brunt of his weight across her shoulders as she twisted away. She elbowed him sharply in the nose, and he jerked back.

Holding back, she thought. Playing with her? Or . . .

He wasn’t an enemy.

Or was he?

There was real rage in his eyes. It didn’t seem directed at her, though. Didn’t seem directed at all, just free-floating fury.