Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

“Don’t feel like it,” Erinya said. She didn’t check; Demalion, still standing mutely before her, hand raised with his crystal “eye,” was proof enough of that. Sylvie remembered the rigor tension of the girl in the bar, her own collapse in Miami. Being read took something from you.

The elevator dinged open, and Erinya slumped with the jolt. Sylvie reached out, wrapping an arm around the Fury’s waist. Pins and needles, a shocking cold/heat confusion, and nerves firing in overload—Sylvie nearly jerked away. Demalion reached out and steadied her, fumbling only a little.

Together they manhandled the quietly growling Fury to his apartment, with only one gaping eyewitness.

Sylvie just shook her head. Normally, she’d worry about it, but with all that was going on in the city? A single, bleeding, mythological monster wasn’t much of a secret.

They dropped Erinya on the couch, Demalion fidgeting, the crystal going hand to hand, until Sylvie stopped it with her own. “You should go elsewhere,” she suggested. “Erinya’s presence is causing the blindness.”

“It’s my apartment,” he said. “End of discussion.”

“At least go into the bedroom, shut the door.” Like that would even slow the Fury down if she lost it. Sylvie wasn’t going to endanger Demalion; wasn’t that what she had told Anna D?

“No,” he said. “I’ll be watching.” He tapped the crystal meaningfully.

“Fine,” Sylvie said. “We’ll be getting cleaned up in the bathroom. Eri—you ever had oxycodone?”

“I’LL HEAL,” ERINYA SAID. “DON’T NEED YOUR HELP.”

Sylvie stared at the strange, smoky stain leaking through the Fury’s skin and mesh shirt, staining Demalion’s pale couch. “Then get up,” she said.

Erinya raised herself a bit, fell back panting. Sylvie helped her up, ignoring the growl. Hell, Eri’s growl was becoming an almost familiar sound track to her life.

“Before we get cozy patching you up, is Hera gonna come back for you?”

“No.”

Demalion made a quiet scoffing sound. Sylvie was on the same page. Nothing was so untrustworthy as a flat denial.

She asked again. Erinya snarled, made a sudden sharp whine as she stumbled over one of Demalion’s boxes, and nearly fell.

Sylvie got closer, put an arm around her waist again, and was bombarded once more by the sensation she’d just grabbed hold of a live wire. She gritted her teeth. Bran lived with the Furies, and he was human; he could stand their touch. Loved a god, and invited him into his bed. Sylvie could walk a Fury to the bathroom and the first-aid kit.

“As long as I’m not trying to get to Kevin, they don’t care,” Erinya said. “You told me to tell him about Lily. I haven’t been able to.”

“I thought Hera lost power. You couldn’t beat her?”

“She made me,” Erinya said. “I can’t raise my hand to her. But she could destroy us at will. Once. Now, she can only hamper.”

“Some hampering,” Sylvie said. “You look half-dead.”

Erinya growled beneath her shaking hands. Supporting the Fury was not doing Sylvie’s ribs any good; the Fury was surprisingly heavy, as if magic weighed more densely than flesh and bone.

“First aid and triage, coming right up,” Sylvie said. “Get out of the way, Demalion.”

“She’s a monster,” Demalion said. He leaned up against the wall to the tiny bathroom, his blind eyes disapproving.

“So don’t watch,” Sylvie said, and with a last grunt of effort, dragged Erinya around Demalion and into the bathroom. She kicked the door shut in Demalion’s face and sank to the floor, Erinya landing atop her. “Ow, ow, ow,” Sylvie said, and pretended that was release enough from the pain, that the tears on her face were from exertion, not hurt.

Erinya nuzzled her throat, and Sylvie managed to still her instinctive reaction to jerk away. If she torqued her ribs once more today, she’d probably faint. If she passed out, the Fury might eat her; right now, Erinya had the teeth for it, curving needles the color of ancient ivory. Bony stubs protruded from her shoulder joints, flared back and ended abruptly, like stripped bat wings, broken off.

“You smell like that old cat,” Erinya complained. “That’s where you were? Hidden beneath her time? Smothered in her memories of sand?”

Old cat, Sylvie thought, mind dragging away from pain into rational thought. Old cat. Anna D. “How old is she?” Irrelevant really, to everything else, but—she cast a furtive glance at the closed door, at the man behind it—she wanted to know.

“Forever,” Erinya said. “The only one. The oldest thing ever.”

The oldest thing—well then, maybe, Sylvie would allow that Anna D might know what she was talking about. Maybe. Still didn’t excuse playing games with the information.

Sylvie knelt up with a wince and reached for the first-aid kit. She scored another Advil or two for herself and dry-swallowed, then pulled out gauze, sutures, the curved needle.

“Take off your shirt,” Sylvie said. Erinya grinned wolfishly, and the spiderwebbed, torn mesh of her shirt began to sink into her skin, first, like dark veins moving beneath pale flesh, then like a shadow sinking into deep water, vanishing.

“That’ll work,” Sylvie said, and tried not to wonder about the jacket she had borrowed. Surely the Fury wouldn’t have let her wander off with a chunk of her skin? No, Erinya had said Bran had bought it for her.

Sylvie shook the thoughts away and stopped her hands from trembling. Erinya seemed minded to allow her to play doctor; still, best not flaunt an unsteady hand.

The wound was worse than she had thought—the mesh of the not-shirt had tangled shadows over it, disguising its depth, its breadth. A raw slash ran from just above Eri’s hipbone, across her muscled belly, up under her scant breast, going deeper. Sylvie put her hand out and leaned Erinya forward, looking at her back. Exit wound there, a triangular tear where the spine should be.

“Spear?” Sylvie asked.

“She was pushing me all over this city,” Erinya said. “Wrought-iron fence.”

They bled, for lack of a better word, but nothing so ordinary as blood. Sylvie touched the wound with a cautious hand, drew the loose flap of skin upward. Dark fluid leaked over her fingertips like ether, cold, slippery, not quite weighty, and drizzled up her palm. It was like the ghost of blood, and her hand buzzed and shook with the touch. Inhuman, Sylvie thought again. On the surface and within.

Sylvie’s mouth dried. The skin, pulled away from the wound, revealed nothing human at all beneath. There should have been outraged tissue, carmine and gory, the creamy slick shine of exposed bone, the smell strong and foul. If Erinya had been human, the makeshift spear would have shish kebabbed the lung, liver, stomach, and severed the spinal column.

Erinya wasn’t human, and there was nothing within her flesh but the roiling ghostly blood.

“You healed fast enough when I shot you,” Sylvie said, and didn’t Erinya bridle at that reminder.

“It’s bigger than a bullet hole,” Erinya said. “And I’m . . . tired. But I’d heal, even without your help.” She cupped her hand beneath the thickest stream; the blood stained her hand, then faded inward like the shirt had done, reclaimed by her body.

“Such gratitude,” Sylvie said. It wasn’t blood; it was power. The core that was Erinya. The soul her shell was meant to contain. Soul, blood, power; for a creature like the Fury, it was all the same.

Sylvie threaded the needle, trying not to broadcast that her skills were all theory, no practice. She put the first stitch in; Erinya didn’t bother to flinch. What every med school needed, Sylvie thought, feeling a little light-headed, a practice dummy that bled but didn’t feel.