Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

She’d slept like crap, and, while she was tempted to blame late-night indigestion caused by bad pasta, she knew it was all her own doing. Most of the time, she was glad of her own stubborn determination to see a problem through to the bitter end. Most of the time. That same determination turned ugly when the villains went free. When her youngest employee, Rafael Suarez, had died, her dreams had been nothing but her brain chewing on the injustice of it, a hundred different revenge scenarios, ways she could find them and make them pay; she hadn’t actually slept well until his killers had been dealt with.

In the aftermath of the Odalys mess, she’d expected to sleep poorly. Four teenagers had died. Her sister had nearly died. And the mess with Demalion and Wright was nightmare fodder all on its own. Two ghosts, one body; only Wright’s unexpected sacrifice had led to Demalion’s survival. For which she was grateful down to her toes, but it needed adjusting to. How did you deal with your lover walking around in another man’s body, when everything that should have been familiar was strange? Sylvie was still trying to work that one out.

She’d gotten a bit of breathing room when Demalion retreated back to Chicago with his own plans and goals. First, he told her carefully, aware that it was going to be a sore point, he wanted to rejoin the ISI, wanted to be recruited all over again. Sylvie was too glad to have him back to argue.

Besides, his second goal was one she agreed with. Demalion wanted to make sure Wright’s wife and son were taken care of. “No pension for his death,” Demalion had said, “not while I’m wearing his skin.”

How that translated to his pretending to be Wright for a time, Sylvie wasn’t sure. She had ideas of her own. Demalion had grown up without knowing his father. He didn’t want Jamie Wright to do the same.

Sylvie closed her eyes again, trying to figure the damage. Worse to think your father abandoned you? Or worse to see him turned into a stranger?

She started to drift off, dipped into her dreamscape again, and jerked awake, breath fast in her lungs. Again with the violence. Right back where she’d left off the first time. Trying to kill Patrice.

Her dreams had been chaotic things—vivid, distorted images and a strange, wild growling, the scent of blood and corruption. The dreams centered on Sylvie tracking Patrice Caudwell through the city, scouring the dreamscape for sight of Bella Alvarez, the teenager whose body Patrice had taken for her own. But Patrice proved as tricky to deal with in dreams as she was in the real world— Sylvie emptied clip after clip of bullets into her smug face, but the woman refused to die.

That was when her dreams had gone weirder, when a voice rasped over her shoulder, a hand closed over hers, felt but not seen. Like this, her little dark voice said. For vengeance. Like this. Her gun shifted to a blade, her hand guided along a bloody pattern as Patrice fell apart before it.

It had been deeply satisfying in her dreams, less so when she was awake and faced with the reality of the situation. Bella Alvarez’s death was only on the tally Sylvie kept; as far as the police were concerned, the girl was alive and well.

She would have to do something about Patrice. Pity the world was determined to keep her otherwise occupied.

It wouldn’t take long to shoot her, leave her dying in the body she killed for, her little dark voice suggested. Sylvie swallowed back the rage before it could really get started, accepted the thought instead of arguing all the reasons shooting Patrice would be problematic, and moved on with a mental wrench. It was Alex’s idea—a plan to defang the danger that lurked beneath Sylvie’s skin.

A plan to tame you, the voice growled, and Sylvie had a harder time shaking it back: It was true. She had promised Alex she’d try it, but she thought it was doomed to failure. The little dark voice, Lilith’s rage at the status quo, had survived generations and generations; Sylvie didn’t think it could be shut off and ignored like a kindergarten bully. Alex said the voice was part of Sylvie, and therefore hers to control. Sylvie agreed because it was always easier to agree with Alex; but in all honesty, the voice felt separate, a piece of her but not part of the whole. Something extra.

As opinionated as the voice was, it wasn’t always right, and it didn’t make allowances for real-world considerations. Shoot Patrice in Bella’s body and do what with the body, the inevitable investigation? At the moment, it was just too much risk.

Patrice, as little as Sylvie liked it, could wait for Sylvie to come up with a plan. It was simple math. One known murderess roaming free, sampling the joys of being flesh once more, or shape-shifting dead women who could and would kill cops.

Showered, dressed in time-smoothed khakis, boots, and a long-sleeved green T-shirt, she faced the day, knowing that as soon as the dampness from the shower left her skin, sweat would start. But if she was going to be hiking through the ’Glades again, covering up was a necessity. Snakebite, saw grass, and sunburn were a miserable trifecta.

She grabbed a couple of protein bars from the back of the cupboard, made sure she had an extra clip in her bag, and clattered down the concrete risers. That early, the parking lot beside the complex was a tangle of people leaving for work, jockeying for the single exit onto the highway. Sylvie munched her protein bar— mmm, sandy —and bided her time.

Her cell phone rang as she was reaching the main entrance to the Palmetto Expressway, and she fumbled it to her ear. “Yeah, Alex.”

“You’re not at work,” her partner said. “I brought coffee and everything.”

“Not at the office,” Sylvie said, “but I’m working. You catch the news last night? That bomb in the Everglades?”

“. . . You’re not a cop, Sylvie.”

“And it wasn’t a bomb,” Sylvie said. “Five dead women, one of whom burst into flame hot enough to blow up a helicopter, and another turned into a bear—”

“Okay, okay, it’s definitely your case,” Alex said. “What can I do?”

“Hunker down and get ready for company. Seriously, Alex, this whole bomb cover story is thin. Lio thought they’d have Feds descending on them for the bodies in the’Glades—serial killer in a national park. But once this happened—”

“ISI,” Alex said. “Those bastards.”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. The Internal Surveillance and Investigations agents were never fun to have around. They coupled the usual government-agency attitude with levels of manipulation and secrecy that made them about as trustworthy as the average con man. They talked a good game about controlling the Magicus Mundi , but people still ended up dead. “That’s one of the reasons I’m headed out to the scene today. I want to get there before they do.”

Alex let out an exasperated sigh that Sylvie nearly felt through the phone. “Sylvie. The scene’s going to be swarming with cops and press, and even if it’s not—dead shape-shifters who can’t be all that dead if they’re tearing into people? I don’t like you going alone.”

“Didn’t say I was going alone,” Sylvie said. “I’m picking up Tierney Wales on the way out of town.”

“The Ghoul ? Like that’s any better—”

“Later, Alex,” Sylvie said. “Actually, wait—you want to look up monster myths in the Everglades? Just on the off chance that I’m dealing with something more monster, less magic.”

“Swamp apes, chupacabras, three-tailed gators,” Alex said. “Cryptozoology? Be still my heart.” The words were delivered flat, deadpan, but Sylvie thought there might be a genuine thread of excitement in Alex’s tone. Alex did so love the out of the ordinary.