Lyn Benedict: Sins & Shadows

“You’ll find him?” Dunne said, interrupting her thoughts.

“What if I fail?” Sylvie asked.

Dunne closed his eyes, biting at his lip, exhaustion pulling his features. Outside the police slowly dispersed. “Don’t. I couldn’t bear it.”

“And they’re the stick to make sure I do my best,” Sylvie said. “Them and your sisters.”

“Not mine,” he muttered. “ The sisters.”

“You want me to take your case; you won’t take no for an answer, and you’ve got the power to make my life extremely difficult and very short,” Sylvie said. “I suppose that means there’s no carrot to the stick. Just a do-it-or-else kind of clause.” Bitterness laced her voice. Maddening to take on a case when she wanted to quit; to do so without remuneration made her want to spit.

His face cleared a little in surprise. “No, of course you’ll get paid. Name your price. I am a god, Sylvie, whether you choose to accept it or not. Your fee could reflect that. What do you want?”

The Eumenides sisters were the only faces left in her storefront window; they watched Dunne as faithfully as the police had, but with far more intelligence behind their eyes, a visual reminder of the power Dunne wielded.

Sylvie’s heart skipped—a god? The possibilities reeled before her. Money zipped by; she always needed that, but money was easy. If Dunne wasn’t lying, if he was a god, he could give her something far more valuable. Something that would lift the guilt from her back and make Alex smile again. There was really only one thing to ask for.

“Anything I want?” she said, trying for casual in her voice, trying not to let him see how much this mattered.

“Pretty much,” he said.

“Can you bring back the dead?”

“IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?” HE ASKED, HOLDING HER GAZE.

“I asked, didn’t I?” she said. Hope and disbelief warred in her, came out as bad temper. “And I don’t mean a zombie, dead flesh animated and forced to feign a life that it can barely recall. Don’t give me any Star Trek Prime Directive objections, either . . . that you’re not allowed to interfere. You claim to be a god. Put up or shut up. Can you do it? ”

“Sometimes,” he said. “There are a lot of gods, Sylvie, and each of us has our own followers, devout folk who are ours to do with as we will. Then there are the rest. So few humans are truly devout anymore, mouthing words without belief. They’re up for grabs, and we divide them. We’re not too comfortable with sharing, though sometimes deals have been struck.

“If he’s mine or no one’s, I can bring him back. If not, not without permission. But most of law enforcement falls under my aegis. Including you.”

“I belong to no one,” Sylvie snapped.

He shrugged, not taking offense. The sisters, on the other hand, scowled at Sylvie through the window. Sylvie thought she could feel the thick glass vibrate beneath the weight of their collective growl.

“I’ve heard that before,” Dunne said. “As a general rule, policemen claim to lack belief in abstracts, but most of them believe in me. In justice. In the idea that wrongs can be made right.”

“Suarez isn’t getting any less dead,” Sylvie said.

“How did he die? What one god has done, it is not wise to undo.”

“He was killed by a bullet. By a human,” Sylvie said.

“Show me,” he said.

“Show you?” she repeated. “I didn’t videotape it. I had other things on my mind at the time. Knee-deep in satanists tends to do that to a girl.” She watched his face, and said, “I suppose you’re going to say since a satanist fired the gun, he’s lost—”

“That’s not a problem,” he said. “Satan’s not a god, only a fallen angel and one not inclined to waste his limited power defending his followers. But you must show me, Sylvie. I don’t know your man. To bring him back, I need to be able to find him.”

“How?”

“Just remember it. I’ll watch through your eyes.”

“I can’t do that,” she said.

“You’re doing it all the time,” he said, his voice softening. “You worry at it like the lion with the thorn.”

When she thought she was ready, she said, “His name was Rafael Suarez, my assistant and friend. He got into blood magic and went junkie for it, got wrapped up in the pain and power. Masochism done magic style.”

Sylvie let the words unroll, the images fill her mind. By the time she’d realized the scope of his problem, he’d gone to the satanists’ altar eagerly, hunting the ultimate rush. Sylvie had crashed the party, Alex refusing to be left behind, and there had been a brief stalemate as the celebrants saw Sylvie’s gun. They might have been reaching for power, but they were mortal and selfish at the moment. The gun sobered Suarez as well, sent him reeling from the altar toward them. A look back, and he crossed himself, a brief, desperate prayer for forgiveness.

At the time, Sylvie had seen it as a meaningless gesture, but now, in her head, the image of the sketched cross burned so bright it made her eyes water.

Dunne sighed. “He was Catholic? And truly believed. I’m sorry. He’s been taken to the light god’s hands, and He is a most jealous god.”

“So that’s a no, then? Figures,” Sylvie said, when the disappointment that thickened her voice past speech faded.

“I’m sor—” he said. She flung up a hand. Stop. Sorry meant nothing to her.

“Then you have nothing to offer me,” Sylvie said. “But I guess it doesn’t matter. You’ve got my obedience anyway.” She couldn’t believe she had almost liked this man.

“That’s not true,” he said. “I can give you the other thing you want, the thing you don’t want to admit to.” There was a note in his voice suddenly that resonated with her own internal voice, the one that spoke so often in terms of kill or be killed. She raised her head and met his eyes, no longer gentle, but cold, grey, and full of purpose.

“I’ll bring them to justice.”

Sylvie’s heart thudded in her rib cage. “The cops can do that,” she said, dismissively. “ I can do that.”

“When they were masked?” he asked. “When the trail from the club has gone cold? When they’ll be hunting you? Kill you, and they not only get their power, they get rid of a witness to their crimes. Or . . . just say the word, and I’ll take care of them.”

Sylvie shivered; another line crossed. Asking Dunne to remove her human enemies was only one step from her doing it herself. Of becoming the monster. Still, the word hissed out, over her doubts, over her fears. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice gentling again, as if he could read that weak trace of dismay in her thoughts.

“It would be . . . justice,” she said, voice flat. Her hands shook, and she slid her wet palms down the sides of her jeans. If Dunne and the sisters took out the satanists, it would solve her most pressing problems. Protect Alex, her family, anyone else the cultists ran across in their search for her. “A life for a life.”

“His life for all of theirs,” Dunne said.

“He was only their first victim. They’ll want more.” Sylvie thought of Alex crying silently for days, of her own tears, which stalked her at awkward moments, of Suarez’s bewildered parents uncovering their son’s private life. She closed her eyes, allowing that dark whisper to overrule the rest of her mind. “Can you deliver?”

“Yes,” he said. Simple, confident, impatient. He gestured to the sisters, and they sauntered back into the office. Magdala and the punk girl settled on Sylvie’s battered couch, speaking to each other in liquid syllables that Sylvie didn’t recognize. The blonde beelined for Dunne’s side. Obviously, he played favorites, Sylvie thought.