Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

Sylvie felt the numbness in her body spreading, death spreading, and scrabbled at it, not physically—her hands were unresponsive—but willfully. She’d fought off Azpiazu’s curse before; she could do it again. She pushed at the creeping death, rejecting it, refusing it, finding that alien magic and shoving it back toward Azpiazu. The easier target. The dying god.

Like called to like, the balance tipped steadily. The creeping rot sank down her arms, her hands, crawled up and into Azpiazu’s chest. The air around them grew smoky and dull, heavy with the taste of burned blood. It itched along her skin, clung to her hair, her throat, her panting mouth, trying to find a way back in.

Tepeyollotl backhanded Erinya into the underbrush. The Fury rolled, a disjointed spill of limbs and wing, and lay still.

Sylvie wanted Tepeyollotl gone, needed him gone. He’d gotten his vengeance, even if not by his own hand: Azpiazu was slowly going to death. But Tepeyollotl kept prowling, growling under his breath. Sticking around, pacing tight circles when he could be hunting new souls, new followers—a swift and blatant display of power to regain his kingdom. Why? Awaiting his chance to kill her?

No, she thought. If he wanted her dead, she’d be dead. The struggle to push out Azpiazu’s dying curse was making her stupid. Tepeyollotl wasn’t going anywhere without trying to regain the power that Azpiazu had stolen. The power that swirled around Sylvie and Azpiazu like steam trapped in a lidded pot, hotter and hotter, close to exploding.

It must be driving him mad, she thought, forcing herself upright, leaning her weight on the knife, on Azpiazu’s body. Tepeyollotl was so close to his stolen powers, and yet, Azpiazu’s filtering had altered them just enough that he couldn’t reach out and take them. They didn’t fit right anymore.

He’d figure it out soon enough, poking and tasting the new flavor of his stolen power. Sylvie’s lashes drooped under the weight of it; her skin was smudged with Azpiazu’s last bloody breath.

Thing was, Azpiazu’s death hadn’t solved the imminent problem. Freed the women, yes, but Tepeyollotl and loose god-power . . . Tepeyollotl threw back his head and screamed frustration. Lightning lanced from the sky, started the trees burning, tangled snarls of fire leaping from branch to branch. Sparks spattered the shaking ground, singed Erinya’s fur, spurred her to bare consciousness.

If Tepeyollotl got his power back, they’d be standing at ground zero for the god version of a nuclear blast. If the power just . . . dispersed, every bad cess witch in Miami would suck it up and spit it back out in a thousand malicious ways.

Sylvie’s body ached. Shuddered with the magic winding around Azpiazu’s body, around her throat. It felt like that zombie constrictor again, all malevolence and injury just waiting to strike.

Tepeyollotl lowered his gaze from the sky, looked at Sylvie. She met those huge, blood-lit eyes, and knew she was out of time. He was coming for his stolen power, and coming for it now. If she wanted to keep it from him, keep it from the witches and sorcerers . . . she was going to have to take it for herself.

Her little dark voice screamed warning. She knew what happened to people who grasped magic beyond their abilities, knew that Azpiazu’s death would look gentle in comparison and yet . . . it seemed so easy to just reach out. To put her hand on Azpiazu’s rotting chest and bones and pull instead of push. To seek out the source of that char-smoke-blood power and cup it into her palms.

It was like putting her hands into the heart of a fire. They went from numb to scalding in a heartbeat. She’d expected the god-power to fight her.

It didn’t.

At her first touch, her first tug, the lurking god-energy leaped toward her and poured itself into her skin.

The world was

White-hot.

Her skin was

White-hot.

Her eyes—

She saw everything around her. The violent blurs of power-life-hunger-will that were Erinya and Tepeyollotl, the faltering hiccups of humans forced into animal shapes, so unnatural it made her teeth itch and burn, her nerves scream. She knew them, felt them all, their fears, their hopes, their dreams.

Tierney Wales, so scared, yet trying to do the right thing. A man who mourned his murderous ghosts like some men mourned their children.

The women—Lupe Fernandez, Anamaria Garcia, Rita Martinez, Elena Llosa—their tangled lives ran kaleidoscope through her mind, college student, schoolteacher, bartender, high-schooler, all their wants, and desires. She knew them down to their cores. Knew which animal shape was which, saw the overlay of their spirits in animal flesh. Saw the wounds that she and Erinya had dealt in defending themselves. Felt each wound like a brand on her skin. The jaguar who’d been blown into the trees, its back broken when Tepeyollotl came. The last wolf still crouched, slavering and terrified, in the underbrush.

Tepeyollotl lunged forward, nails clawing at her; Sylvie desperately missed her guns, and the thought was enough.

Bullets sprayed in Tepeyollotl’s direction, created and fired by her will instead of a gun. Each one felt like it ripped something out of her, replaced it with more magic.

Sylvie’s little dark voice shrieked sheer disgust, utter repulsion at the power burning inward, boring into every cell of her, seeking a home. Her body was flame.

She couldn’t contain this power.

She was.

She shouldn’t be able to. She was only human.

But more than that—

She didn’t want the power. It revolted her, this giant seething mass of magic crawling around, curling through her veins, out her fingers, through her hair. It invaded and tainted every breath she pulled into straining lungs, reinforcing every bone in her body like a coating of molten steel, jacking her heart rate to hummingbird speed. Her skin hissed with energy, a living force trying to remake her every molecule into something more. Something greater.

Something inhuman.

She burned in the night like a bonfire, and snake patterns slid over her flesh, red, black, yellow—serpent colors. Sylvie groaned, tried to hold the power at a distance, but it was as hard to shake off as lava.

Erinya staggered to three feet, flesh sloughing off with creeping rot, her exposed core smoky and scarlet, and Sylvie saw a sudden escape from an inhuman future as an unwilling god.

“Erinya!”

THE FURY WAS TOO SLOW TO DODGE TEPEYOLLOTL’S REFLEXIVE ATTACK, and Sylvie reached out and yanked the Fury toward her with all the aimless power smoldering in her soul. Erinya disappeared from beneath Tepeyollotl’s grip, reappeared skin-close to Sylvie, sprawled at her feet, so broken, still angry, still wanting to fight. Sylvie wanted to give her the means to do so.

Sylvie reached down, and said wildly, “I owe you? Come and get it!” and pressed her hands down into Eri’s wild hair, into her scaly skin, and kicked the power outward. Evicted it with prejudice. Forced it into a new home.

Erinya arced under Sylvie’s hands, struggling even as Sylvie force-fed her strength and that unwanted power. Erinya’s false flesh sealed up around the gaping wounds; her scales smoothed to obsidian; her feathers grew thick and glossy and scarlet. Her teeth lengthened, grew sharp, grew white, near glowing in the dark.

Sylvie’s heart slowed, her skin cooled, pinging like an overtaxed engine. The patterns crawling her flesh slowed. Retreated. The glow oozed away from Sylvie, lit every single scale and feather on Erinya’s body.

“What did you—”

“You owe me now,” Sylvie said. “Get rid of Tepeyollotl. You’re a match for him.”

It was the best thing about Erinya, Sylvie thought, collapsing, her legs gone numb and shaky beneath her. Give her the whiff of a violent command, and she was all over it, no hesitation. It was also the worst thing about her—that endless appetite for violence.