Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

But if she could wake Wales, he might have magical means to help. She crept toward him, trying to keep Azpiazu from noticing. Playing with Erinya just wasn’t holding his attention the way it should, though Erinya was doing her bloody best.

The jaguar lunged out from the underbrush; Sylvie dodged the killing blow but still tumbled backward, hitting the ground with a painful, breath-stealing thud.

Something slammed into her kidney with the near-familiar pain of a gun crushed between her body and the ground. But she’d discarded all the guns once they’d emptied.

She kicked the jaguar in the chest, kicked hard at the damaged leg, and the cat screamed and retreated for easier prey. Sylvie rolled, put her hand on the source of the pain, and found Cachita’s knife. Metal handle.

Obsidian blade.

The jaguar, burdened by Azpiazu’s will, kept fighting, turned her attention toward the only remaining prey. Cachita. Still contorted, face grey with exhaustion, still chanting, No no no , still locked in her struggle with Tepeyollotl.

“Erinya!” Sylvie said. “Protect her—”

“Not fair,” Erinya gasped, even as she moved Cachita’s direction with a horrible, broken stagger. She was ragged, savaged nearly past mending. “You’ll hunt without me.” Azpiazu let her run, then grabbed her remaining wing, and dragged her back. Playing.

A single moment. That was all it took. Erinya spun, clawing; Sylvie lunged after the jaguar, but was too slow.

CACHITA SCREAMED, HER VOICE SPIRALING UPWARD, THEN RIPPED into silence. The jaguar’s jaws closed down hard on Cachita’s straining neck, white teeth going black with arterial blood.

Azpiazu’s jaguar had broken the wildly uneven stalemate between Cachita and her god. No agreement could hold through one party’s being mauled. The jaguar shook Cachita; she dropped limply, eyes empty and dead.

The world shook; trees shattered all around them, earthquakes and rot mingling with disastrous results. The reflective pool cracked, let stagnant water grease the stones around them.

Azpiazu stopped stalking Erinya, paused, waiting for his chance at the god who’d given him so much, waiting for Tepeyollotl to see what he’d become. That wicked smile was on his face once more, the bubble of laughter in his throat.

“You are enjoying yourself way too much,” Sylvie said.

Tepeyollotl breathed himself into the world, an enormous concussive force that knocked her sprawling, knocked the breath from her lungs. Her ears stung as if wasps had crawled inside and attacked. When she touched them, her fingers came away wet with blood.

Erinya’s despairing moan was a fractured whisper in Sylvie’s traumatized hearing.

Enough.

They were going to lose.

They were going to lose everything .

Beneath Tepeyollotl’s looming arrival, Cachita’s body faded, drifted to smoke. Obliterated. Dead without even a body to mark where she had fallen.

Sylvie wasn’t going to lose anyone else. Not the women. Not Wales. Not even Erinya. She clutched the obsidian knife with white knuckles.

Tepeyollotl slunk down from the raised balcony, his heavy bulk overwhelming the wide, stone stairs. His smoky shadow flowed before him like a river, eating away at the stone, a destructive, intangible river. The earth trembled and rippled. Trees fell with the sound of torn fabric, of reality altering in the reflection of the god’s anger.

A sharp avalanche heralded an entire wall sliding down, hitting the shaking ground and puddling outward. Sylvie nearly lost her footing all over again, and, in regaining it, made the mistake of looking at Tepeyollotl. She couldn’t look away.

Tepeyollotl was the shattered remnant of Tezcatlipoca, Cachita had said. The god moving ponderously through the world looked shattered. He was four times human size, his flesh scarred and battered and studded with what looked like broken glass. Some of his skin wasn’t human flesh at all but a tattered and decaying jaguar pelt, equal parts black spots and char. It sagged unhealthily. He crawled on all fours, yellowed nails curling over his massive fingers, sharp enough to leave gouges in stone; his eyes were blood-red from lash to lash, and scars ran down his cheeks and throat.

Despite his bulk, his bones jutted, pressing against the jaguar pelt, against flesh that seemed parchment thin, in angular, agonizing protrusions. He raised his head, sniffed the air, nose wrinkling, human mouth drawing up into a cat’s whiskered cheek pads. His huge tongue was white-spined. A single lick would flay a man.

Still blind to Azpiazu.

That last bit of mortality, that binding sigil, hiding him. His only weakness saving him from his enemy.

Tepeyollotl’s bloody gaze locked on Sylvie. His lips peeled back. He coughed, a jungle cat’s hunting call. It rattled her bones, raised the hairs all over her body. It was all she could do not to retreat to basic mammal instinct and curl up, hoping to be unseen.

“Should have run, Shadows,” Azpiazu said. He held his hands out before him; oily darkness dripped from each palm. It flowed outward toward her like tar, spreading rot.

God of Death, indeed. And if he was accessing his new powers, her time was running short.

Sylvie lunged forward, dragged Wales’s deadweight out of the path of the rot, picked up the necromantic blade in her free hand. She kept the obsidian one behind her back, hoping he hadn’t seen it. Dark hilt, dark blade, dark night. Erinya dropped heavily down beside her, panting, coughing up something smoky and dark. Demigod blood.

Azpiazu said, “Caught between death and . . . death. What are you going to do, Shadows? Nothing. You’re just a human woman. And I’m a god.”

Sylvie’s retort died on her lips. There. On his chest. Dead center. The binding sigil—the fusion symbol that held the rest of the spells together, the last bit of human in him. The flesh there rippled, muscles straining from an exertion the rest of him managed effortlessly.

“Not yet,” Sylvie said.

“Close enough,” he said. “And that knife won’t help you.” He spread his arms. “I can be generous. If you want to try . . . one last blow before I eat your heart and soul. Make you my sacrifice.”

Arrogance, she thought. Had to love it.

She grinned, dropped the silvery blade, and brought the obsidian knife up, hard, fast, and on target. It lodged right where she wanted it. Right through the spell link he had carved into his skin. The one that blinded Tepeyollotl to his presence.

Azpiazu, impaled, staggered forward, clutching at Sylvie’s arms, slipping death under her skin. Her skin grew cold and heavy, unresponsive. Nerves withering, death creeping in. Her numb hands slid on the knife’s handle, losing grip. She compensated with a full-body shove; the blade had already penetrated, its glassine edges sliding through skin, muscle, and bone as if it had been designed exactly for that purpose. She would push it deeper with her last effort, lodge it in his black heart, if that was what it took.

Sylvie didn’t think it would come to that.

Azpiazu coughed, his stolen power bleeding out, his eyes showing shock and betrayal.

“I kill the unkillable,” Sylvie whispered.

“I’ll outlast you,” he gasped, coughing.

“No,” she said. “You won’t.” She yanked the knife out, a slippery leap in her hands, and jammed it through his throat.

AZPIAZU SCREAMED, AND TEPEYOLLOTL ROARED, A CAT’S RAGE IN A human-shaped throat; a hundred or more years of his prey’s eluding him ended all at once.

He leaped forward, crashing through the remnants of the pond, into the feeble shield Erinya made. Erinya blindsided him, clung fast, and sent them both tumbling.