Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

“No,” Sylvie said.

“But you’re more fun than other people,” Erinya said. “You’re sneaky and you’re dangerous and you brought me good sport. A ghost that changed bodies to escape death. I didn’t know humans could do that.”

Sylvie’s breath stuttered in her chest; she stumbled. Patrice’s head squelched nastily inside the jacket. Erinya paused, predatory instincts firing. “Sylvie?” It was a growl.

“Tripped,” Sylvie said.

Erinya’s dark-eyed gaze narrowed; her eyes burned out, leaving black pits in her head. Her hair shifted and spiked toward feathers, losing control of the quasi-human form and taking on the pure aspect of Fury. Sylvie jerked her eyes away, focused them on the safer sight of the lumpy jacket in her arms, growing steadily damper and darker. Looking a Fury in the eyes led to nightmares at best, madness at worst.

Her day was too full for either option.

“You smell like . . . secrets,” Erinya said, keeping pace with her. Her feet on the pavement were clawed; leathery boots shifted into sinewy legs and strong paws.

“It’s my job,” Sylvie said. “Lots of secrets.”

Warmth along the side of her face, and the pinprick of needle teeth closing gently, warningly, along her nape. Sylvie stopped. Her heart rocketed. Erinya would be tasting fear, along with sweat and adrenaline and secrecy.

Sylvie dropped Patrice’s head, punched Erinya in the muzzle as hard as she could. Her knuckles split; the skin of her neck stung as Erinya’s teeth were jarred free.

“Get off me,” Sylvie said. She drew her gun, turned to face the monster. “Look, Eri, I’m probably happier than I should be that you’re not gone, not dead. That doesn’t mean I won’t do my best to make you that way if needed.”

“Something . . . important,” Erinya said. She turned her head this way and that, that strange nightmare creature, half dog, half bird, all hunger. Her forked tongue tasted the air, cleaned the thin smear of Sylvie’s blood from her curving teeth. “I’ll find out.”

“You know what?” Sylvie said. “Leave the body. I’ll take care of it. You, go back to Dunne.”

Erinya laughed, shifting back toward her human guise. Her smile had no warmth in it. “You’re not the boss of me, Sylvie.”

“I summoned you; doesn’t that count?”

“That’s the trouble with calling in mercenaries,” Erinya said. “They’re hard to control. They like to be paid. Give me something, and I’ll leave your secrets alone.”

“And here I thought you were on a god-given mission,” Sylvie said. She picked up Patrice’s head again, grimacing at the splotch it had left on the pavement, and headed for the truck. She focused her thoughts on practical matters, tried to soothe the worry from her mind and body. Erinya’s senses were sharper than any animal’s, and she coupled that with rudimentary mind reading. Sylvie thought hard about whether she’d left the tarp in the truck lockbox, whether the olive fabric would be enough to hide stains, whether the tide was right to drop a body, and when all of those didn’t ease the suspicion on Erinya’s face, she went for the sure shot. She thought of Patrice, dead. Sylvie’s own guilty satisfaction that Patrice wasn’t going to prosper. That her enemy was destroyed.

A sated smile curved Erinya’s lips; her lashes came down, changing anger to pleasure. “I did good.”

“Yeah, you did,” Sylvie said. She gave the praise without hesitation. For one thing, a happy Erinya was an Erinya less likely to pry. For another . . . Well, it had been a job neatly done.

Sylvie had hoped for a more subtle way to kill Patrice. She’d hoped for something that could pass for a medical condition. As far as the world was concerned, Bella Alvarez had already had one serious medical episode. But, once Patrice had started throwing witches Sylvie’s way, it could only end violently.

Erinya slung the body into the back of the truck without even a shrug of effort, wrapped it with the tarp, and climbed into the cab humming tunelessly. Sylvie shivered. It was a human thing to do, and it sounded nothing like human at all. She put the truck into gear and headed out.

Erinya stayed with her long enough to see Patrice’s body slip beneath the deep waters, weighted down with broken concrete and rebar, before vanishing. Sylvie hoped the Fury had gone back to Dunne, to Olympus, to anyplace other than Miami. She didn’t even let a wisp of Chicago cross her mind. Erinya’s disappearance was a bullet dodged. Made Sylvie crazy, though. If she hadn’t been carrying that dangerous secret, she might have been able to recruit Erinya to fight against Azpiazu.

Sylvie ran the truck through a car wash, rinsing off any blood that might have seeped into the back, and called it done.

SEEN IN FULL DAYLIGHT, CACHITA’S HOUSE SEEMED ALL THE MORE out of place in what was otherwise a nice old neighborhood. Sylvie parked the truck in front of the massively overgrown lawn, scattering lizards and spotted cats. Feeling eyes on her, she turned. Cachita’s next-door neighbor stood in the doorway, staring over at Sylvie. When she realized she had Sylvie’s attention, she beckoned imperiously.

Sylvie gritted her teeth but adjusted her path. The woman, dressed neatly in jeans and a silk shell, looked like the type to get difficult if thwarted. Sylvie wasn’t in the mood for difficult. She forded the grass and stepped onto the neighbor’s close-clipped lawn.

“Are you with the city?” the woman asked. She was younger than Sylvie had thought. In her fifties, not the seventies she had imagined when Cachita had mentioned her cat-crazy neighbor.

“Nope,” Sylvie said. “Just visiting.”

“She’s your friend?” The woman’s mouth wrinkled in disgust.

“Not that either,” Sylvie said.

“Well, tell her I’ve called the city. She needs to get her house cleaned up. It’s an eyesore. It’s always been an eyesore, but we were assured the new tenant was going to fix it up.”

“Your cats seem to be enjoying it,” Sylvie said. “Isn’t there some limit to how many you’re allowed?”

The woman’s brows rose sky-high. “My cats? They’re not mine. They came with her.”

Sylvie absorbed that with a spark of strangely potent anger, nodded once, and stalked off the woman’s lawn.

“Where are you going? I’m not done.”

“Don’t care,” Sylvie said. She stormed up Cachita’s front path, pounded on the door. When there was no answer, she studied the warped front door, the gap that let AC bleed out. She kicked hard just beside the latch; the door groaned. She shifted her weight, braced herself better, and kicked again. The latch ripped through the humidity-rotted wood frame, and the door slammed open.

Sylvie kicked it shut behind her, found Cachita scrambling out of her bedroom, Taser in hand, bare feet, and panicked.

Recognition blossomed as Sylvie snapped on the overhead light, but her expression stayed wary.

“Did you lie about absolutely everything?” Sylvie asked. “Even your goddamned cats?”

Cachita’s shoulders drew tight, then dropped. She said, “You going to shoot me? Or you going to wait for answers?”

“You’re the one with the Taser,” Sylvie said.

“You’re the one with the gun,” Cachita said. Her eyes flickered downward.

Sylvie followed her gaze. One thing Cachita was right about. Sylvie didn’t even remember unholstering the gun.

Fallout from killing Patrice, from hanging out with a Fury. Her temper burned hotter and faster than usual. And that was saying something.

“How ’bout we both put our toys away,” Cachita said. Her voice quivered.

Another act? Or honest fear? Sylvie hated that she didn’t know. “You first.”