Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

She slipped free from his grasp, his hands like steel but failing to close tightly enough on her bones. Patrice scrambled toward the sidewalk, through the grass; lizards and a quick black scuttling scorpion fled her.

Sylvie slammed into the girl, using her longer reach, her heavier weight, knelt on the woman’s back. Patrice screeched and clawed, tore gouges in Sylvie’s wrists, but Sylvie undid the clasp on the earring and yanked it away.

Patrice screamed loud and long, shrill enough to make Sylvie recoil. The woman staggered upright and ran. Aron caught her in three swift strides.

“I paid you!” she shrieked.

“Someone else hired me first,” he said. His hands closed over her neck and face; he drew her close as if to kiss her, then wrenched.

A wet, gristly sound and Patrice’s body dropped, knees folding, torso slapping wetly into the grass. Her head, eyes still fluttering, fell a moment later. Aron licked blood off of his fingers and turned back toward Sylvie.

Definitely not a witch, not even a sorcerer, Sylvie thought. Her heart raced; her gun was tight in her hands.

“Gonna shoot me? Again?”

A Power in the city as well as a god. A Power that was looking at Sylvie expectantly. Eagerly. Hungry down to the core. She thought she recognized it. Impossible as it seemed.

“No praise?” he said. “I did it for you.”

She licked dry lips, studied the gothy clothing, the simmering hunger, and took refuge in words. “Seems to me, I did more than my fair share. I got the charm off.”

“I could have done it,” he said. “But I thought you’d want to participate. You like your vengeance, Sylvie.”

“I’m not the one yanking heads off in a public park. With children present.”

“Children should know that monsters can be killed,” Aron said. “Patrice killed two children for her selfish purposes, an infant and that girl whose body she wore. But if it makes you happy, I’ll keep her invisible until you clean her up.”

“Me?”

“I cleaned up after you in Chicago.”

If Sylvie had any lingering doubts about who Aron was, they were fading fast. Especially when he slumped, crossed his arms across his narrow chest, and sulked, spiky black hair loosening and settling like storm clouds over his brow. “You don’t even recognize me, do you.”

“I do,” Sylvie said.

“Yeah?”

“Erinya,” Sylvie named her. The youngest of the Fury trio that worked for Dunne. She was rewarded with a quick smile that bared those vampiric veneers again. Wait. Not veneers after all, not if this was the Fury.

“Took you long enough. I thought you’d know me at the club. I even rubbed up against you, and you couldn’t tell? I came when you called, and you weren’t there. You didn’t even leave me instructions! I had to figure out what you summoned me for all on my own.”

“Cut me some slack,” Sylvie said. “I thought Dunne destroyed you. I saw him devour you when he needed your strength.”

“He absorbed us,” Aron said. “And when he didn’t need us any longer, he spat us back out. Refined us, he said. I hunt specific types of murderers now.”

“Child-killers,” Sylvie said. Of course. It explained the other murders in the city. All people who’d killed children.

Erinya grinned. “It’s a fertile field to play in. Alekta couldn’t wrap her mind around change, so she’s still dealing with matricides, patricides, families gone bad. And Magdala got stuck with crimes committed against society. Bo -ring, just like her.”

“Reshaped you, too,” Sylvie said. “Guess he always wanted a boy?”

“What? This? No,” Aron-Erinya said. “I thought Patrice would like it, and I wanted to get close to her, wanted to draw out the hunt. What about you?”

“Me?”

“Do you like this shape?”

Sylvie opened her mouth to say something in response to Erinya’s violent and unsubtle flirtations and failed. She forgave herself; there was a lot to process—that through a scratchy symbol drawn on a doorstep based on instructions Sylvie’d given herself in a dream, she’d called Erinya down to Miami. That there was anything to call . . . the Furies not gone.

A brief spurt of terror touched her. Demalion. If the Furies were alive and hunting, Demalion’s safety was precarious.

“Refined, my ass,” Sylvie muttered finally. “It’s your body, your choice. My preference is irrelevant.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Aron said. He shook all over like a wet dog, flipped gender. Took on the more familiar form, the punk gothette. It really wasn’t that much of a change. Aron had been long and lean, androgynous. So was Erinya. “So. The body?”

Sylvie’s head ached. She looked down at the blood-spattered grass. Bella Alvarez hadn’t been a big girl. It wouldn’t be much effort to cart her body away. Or they could just leave her. An unsolved murder, committed impossibly in broad daylight.

Even if the murder hadn’t happened practically in her backyard, Bella/Patrice could be linked to Sylvie easily enough through Lio. And Lio thought poorly enough of her at the moment that he might do something rash, something like talking to the ISI. If Bella disappeared, Lio’d be unhappy but unable to get the justice system rolling.

Sylvie said, “You get the body. I’ll get the head.”

Erinya shifted foot to foot. “But I did all the work.”

“I’m the one who summoned you to do it,” Sylvie said. “Cleanup’s part of the job.”

“Fine,” Erinya said. She bent, scooped up the body; blood dribbled down her shoulder. “Where’s your truck?”

Sylvie said, “Give me your jacket.”

“Again?” Erinya dropped the body, shrugged off the jacket. “You’re hard on my clothes, Sylvie. It’s a good thing I like you.”

“It’s a good thing you like bloodstains,” Sylvie said. She spread the jacket on the ground, toed Patrice’s head into the center, and made a neat bundle of it. “Can’t you just magic her away?”

“Not and keep us invisible,” Erinya said. “I’m not really good at the magic part. I’m good at the killing-things part.”

“Yeah, I get you,” Sylvie said. Her mouth stung; she realized she was smiling, straining her split lip. Smiling over a dead body. She stopped.

Erinya sighed. “I’m going to ask Dunne to make you a Fury when you die. You and I can hunt forever. I know he worries about what he should do with you.”

“Nothing,” Sylvie said, “I’m not his.”

“You fight for justice,” Erinya said. “You could be his, no matter your lineage. When it came to it, when you asked for help, for vengeance . . . you drew the scales of justice on Patrice’s doorstep.”

“Tell you what,” Sylvie said. “We move the body now. And God and Dunne can fight over my soul when I’m dead.”

“But that could be such a very long time,” Erinya said.

“Not the way my life is going,” Sylvie said.

“Yeah,” Erinya agreed. “You should be more careful. Tepeyollotl’s skulking around, and he’s a real bastard god. If he hates you, you get your heart ripped out. If he loves you, you get your heart ripped out. Oh! You should take Patrice’s invulnerability charm. It’s not as good as Lilith’s was. It’s only a temporary one, but it’ll help you.”

“No,” Sylvie said. “Those things have hidden costs. I wear it, and someone else suffers, right? Like the tourist who got clipped by a bullet meant for Patrice?”

“Could have been a bad ricochet,” Erinya said. “Guns are no fun. Always best to fight teeth to teeth.”

“That’s not an answer,” Sylvie said.

“Always so suspicious,” Erinya pouted.

“Am I right?”

“Fine. Yes. The talisman would bounce your injuries, your death, to someone else.”