Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

Hera got weak; Hera had owned the Furies. Dunne got strong; Dunne took the Furies’ leashes in hand. Cause and effect. Obvious. But how had he done it? How could a man contain such stolen power and not be consumed by it? She’d seen sorcerers burn up tapping too much magic from another human. What would it feel like to be mortal and tap into a god?

Beside her, Erinya shifted full out, losing all human shape, embodying a creature that Sylvie had never seen before and never wanted to see again. A hooked beak full of teeth, a mane that writhed and tangled along an outstretched neck, eyes that ran bloody tears. Sylvie looked away so fast her neck spasmed. Furies drove men mad. She bet it was after they’d revealed themselves, or given what Erinya had just said, what they saw as themselves.

“Put the scary away, huh?” she said. She stared up at the night sky, stars occluded by streetlights streaming upward. “No need for panic in the streets.”

“There’s no one to watch,” Erinya said.

“There’s me,” Sylvie said. “Don’t want me to go all hysterical on you, do you?” She made her voice light, as if the possibility were laughable; she wondered if her scent would give the game away. She heard the god stretching, the rasp of feathers and fur giving way to the more normal sounds of fabric and metal.

“So you took the out that Dunne provided and came to earth,” Sylvie said. “You live in the mortal realm.”

Erinya nodded. “With Dunne. With Bran. We watch over him, when Dunne can’t.” She stopped dead, hands fisting at her side. “We were hunting when Bran was trapped. It shouldn’t have happened. We were hunting mortals . All four of us, when Dunne alone could have done it. It’s our fault. We shouldn’t have trusted that Bran was safe.”

Sylvie raised a brow. She wasn’t going to try patting the girl on the shoulder, or even mumbling a “there, there,” no matter how mournful she sounded. Sylvie valued her skin too highly for that. Besides, the dark voice chimed in, they had been fools to think Dunne could escape the other gods by running to earth. Someone had to pay for the theft. Brandon Wolf was vulnerable.

In the apartment kitchen, rubbing the last suds from between her fingers, Sylvie paused in her memory. Maybe that was it—the connection Erinya and she had: They both knew what it was like to have innocents hurt while under their protection.

She scrubbed her hand across her face, wiping a few stealthy tears from her lashes. Her hands came away red-tinged, and she shuddered, wildly.

God, more of it? She bent back to the sink, cupped water in her hands, and splashed her face, the stickiness at her neck, the crusting tangle in the hair by her left ear. The water pattered down, rust colored. She did it again until her shirt was sopped and clammy around the collar, and only the steel sink showed through the water drops.

No paper towels to hand, she spotted a worn shirt, crumpled on the Formica counter, and she used it to blot her hair and neck, soak up any lingering blood that might have evaded the water. Black, she thought, so good for hiding stains. It wasn’t like the Maudit was in any position to object, and the cotton was soft, even if it smelled of sulfur and smoke. A slogan on the shirt scratched her skin and put an end to her grooming.

Habit made her drape the shirt neatly over the back of the single kitchen chair to dry. In Miami, everything mildewed given half a chance. The apartment refrigerator was going to be bad enough by the time the landlord realized that the sorcerer wasn’t coming back, why add mold to his or her problem?

Absently, she read the broken, charcoal-colored letters, NDNM , wondering philosophy, rock band, or other.

Erinya was a series of soft scuffles in the other room, and Sylvie rejoined her. “Anything?” Sylvie asked.

“It all smells like magic,” the Fury complained, frustration evident in her voice, and in the scales sliding along her skin. Sylvie was amazed that Erinya could even pass as human the way she shuffled guises. Either the stress was getting to her, eroding her self-control, or—scary thought—Erinya felt as peculiarly comfortable in the strange duo they formed as Sylvie did.

Erinya walked into the small bedroom, yanked the first drawer out of the dresser, ripping the cheap laminate, and dumped the contents to the floor. She rooted around in the mass of clothes with her foot.

“All right then,” Sylvie said. “You check out the bedroom.” Since you’re going to do it anyway, she thought. Sylvie watched the Fury yank another drawer out, and sighed before turning to more organized searching.

The dead Maudit had had a partner, a woman, but she didn’t live here. One chair in the kitchen. One pillow on the bed. One dirty plate at the edge of the futon was still half-full of cooling chow mein. Sylvie’s stomach roiled. When was the last time she’d eaten? Ten, twelve hours ago? That cruller in the bakery.

She picked up the plate, unwilling to look at it, more unwilling to admit the urge to tuck into it. Hell, she’d eaten out of garbage cans more than once, back in the bad times. A sorcerer’s recent leftovers didn’t look too bad, and she liked chow mein. Still, eating your victim’s last meal—Sylvie thought psychologists might find that deeply symptomatic of some regrettable pathology. She set the plate down on the TV, felt a tingly zip and zing in her fingers like the quick dance of current, and jumped back, thinking, Spell!

Two breaths later, she let out a slow sigh and forced herself to relax. Just faulty wiring. She leaned over to check and stared at the plug lying next to the baseboard, six inches or more from the outlet. The TV hissed quietly.

Sylvie backed up to take another look at the screen. Snow. Bad reception. Amazing reception, actually, considering the lack of electricity to the set. But what had he been watching?

She squinted, seeing blurry shapes behind the static, dark, light, a long rush of steady movement that struck a chord of memory. She absently reached up for a nonexistent rabbit ear, then yanked her hand back at the tingle. Duh, Sylvie. Magic. Still, when in doubt. Gingerly, she reached out and thumped the side of the set, prepared this time for the little nonshock sensation. Her eyes stayed glued to the screen.

For a bare second, the screen grew clear, the signal noise twitched and lifted. Sylvie got a fast glimpse of the scene, and recognized it. Why wouldn’t she? She’d been there. The screen was an “I spy” scrying spell keyed to the El station and the oubliette. Sylvie bet that the screen had been nice and clear before Dunne made things go boom.

Sylvie glanced at the noodles again, and grinned. Bet the Maudit had nearly choked when he spied, with his own little eye, Dunne making oubliette hash. No wonder he’d come running.

She turned her attention to the spooky stuff—the mess of chalks and candles, parchments and books—on the coffee table. She fished out that day’s Tribune , folded open to the comics, then the various soda cans, grimacing as some of them sloshed and splashed. Slob, she judged, but sat down before the low table and the space she’d cleared.

Sitting down was a mistake. Weariness swept over her, turning the cheap futon at her back into near-impossible-to-resist comfort. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

Erinya broke a lamp in the bedroom, and Sylvie jerked awake. “Later,” she said. “Finish this case, and I can either sleep for a week, or I’ll be dead.” Her body didn’t want to listen. She raised herself to her feet and hit the kitchenette again. Eating a dead man’s food was wrong somehow; fine, she could accept that, but surely the taboo didn’t extend to his caffeine. She draped herself over the fridge door and selected a Mountain Dew. Good for that little jolt. Crap for taste. She drank it anyway, gulping it on the way back to the living room and dropping the empty on the floor. One more wouldn’t matter.