Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

“—is if Bran’s whole,” she said. Behind Dunne’s rooftop shielding, strange bursts of white light flared and faded. Someone or something was working its way in. A wild card no one wanted or needed.

Sylvie spun, looking, hunting for some hint that Bran’s consciousness was near and able to hear her. The gold spill of his power seemed massed in three places; one, the mindless juncture of Lilith and working spindle, two, the needy coils winding about Dunne, and—there—by the stairwell. A cloudy density hovered, heedless of the currents of struggle. It wasn’t particularly big, but it was almost man-shaped.

Sylvie realized it was hovering over Alekta’s corpse. Definite consciousness, she thought. Grief—an inevitable part of love.

“Bran,” she said. She put a tentative hand out, stirring the nebulous cloud to shifting, sending a cold chill through her skin, as if a ghost had turned in its path to touch her in return.

She loved bad jokes, Bran whispered. But she didn’t know that until she came to be Kevin’s. Until she followed him to the mortal world. This is my fault. But I thought—

Hurry, hurry, the dark voice shrieked, but Sylvie tried a gentler approach.

“You thought you could get away with it,” Sylvie said. Her lips were dry, and when she licked at them, one cracked and bled. “You thought you had it all under control. It hurts to find out you’re wrong,” she said. “But dying isn’t going to make anything better.”

That’s not what you said earlier, Bran communicated, and, despite the sullenness, Sylvie was heartened by his anger. Anything was better than that pervasive grief and despair he’d been projecting a moment ago. Anger, she could live with. But grief—it drowned her, made her numb, thinking of a pair of gold-flecked eyes.

Behind her, Dunne said, “Hurry, Sylvie.” followed by a low groan.

Aggravation mixed with a healthy dose of terror spiked her. “You think Alekta’s death hurts you? Wait ’til Lilith gets smart and uses your power for something other than brute strength. Wait ’til she uses it as it wants to be used. Wait ’til she goes for Dunne’s weak point. His heart .”

She can’t. . . .

“She can. She will. She’s not stupid, Bran. Just frantic. Why did she choose you in the first place? Not simply for your availability. She plans long range. She wanted your power specifically. She’ll be a new and different and deadly kind of Love. And Dunne, who already has a piece of you in his makeup . . . I’m betting he’ll fall easy. You may not have forced him to love you. She will.”

His protests fluttered against her mind, and she shook her head, ignoring him. “Imagine what she’ll do to him. He’ll be her puppet as she makes war on heaven, and sends the Magicus Mundi into chaos.”

“No.” An actual word. A brief eruption of mouth and teeth and flesh. “Kevin’s mine .” There was a hint of body breaching out of the glitter-ghost.

“Then you’d better fight for him,” Sylvie said. “But you can’t do it like this—she’d eat you up like dessert.”

“You do it—”

“No,” she snapped. “Bran, I can’t—”

“Thought you didn’t believe in can’t,” he whispered in her ear, a cool breath, a ghost of something warmer.

“Just do it,” she said. “It’s not my battle. Live or die, the world rests on you.” She coughed, suddenly bone-weary. She dropped to a crouch, as close to a state of readiness as she could manage. Her head rang, and her vision blurred and faded. Her arm burned steadily where the charm had melted, and she kept smelling scorched flesh, even over the blood.

“I’m no good at confrontation,” he murmured. “I couldn’t save myself. You think I can save Kevin? The world?”

Sylvie bit back her retorts. He might be protesting, but he was also doing it. Pulling himself together, making something solid and real out of a ghost image in a gleaming fog.

Like the artist he was, he made a sketch first, a thinned-out body delineating the borders where paint would lie were this anything so ordinary as a canvas. If she had to name the sketch, Sylvie would call it Apprehension , his fear evident in every line, the edge of a bitten lip, an arm that wrapped itself around the jut of a rib, the nervous twitch of a man expecting to be struck.

It called for an encouraging word, but Sylvie couldn’t find anything to say that sounded more meaningful than a Hallmark platitude. Her brain had defaulted to a whisper of desire— Please, please, please, let him do this. Let him succeed. Let him be real again.

His gaze, eyes bare hollows in a shelter of cheekbone, turned to hers. The bitten lip tugged free of white teeth, flushed to color, and curled slightly. “Don’t pray for me,” he said. “Pray to me.”

Across the roof, Dunne’s spine straightened, as if the sound of Bran’s voice was enough to give him a surge of will, enough to push Lilith back, to dissolve the dam at his wish, instead of hers. He used it like a tidal wave, a collapse of weight pushing the power back toward Bran and Sylvie.

Lilith spat a curse, hard-edged words that smudged the air and ignited. Dunne threw up a hand and shielded himself. When the curse faded, his shield crumbled and flowed toward Lilith. She said, “I won’t let you stop me. And I won’t let him.” The next spell ignored Dunne entirely and pinpointed Bran.

Bran’s shell lost definition as the spell roiled forward, absorbing all power in its path. Dunne reached to stop it, and his power was rolled over and into it, increasing the spell’s impetus like an avalanche. Sylvie blinked. Power. Lilith wanted to steal Bran’s power. The curse swallowed power. Sylvie forced herself to her feet, hurled herself in the spell’s path.

Better be right, the dark voice warned.

The blast knocked her backward, scraped some skin from her elbows and her forearms, made her head ring, and gave her the unpleasant sensation of a hungry pig rooting at her body, bruising, invasive. Ultimately, though, it left her unharmed. She didn’t have anything it wanted.

“Want to try again?” Sylvie said. “ ’Cause Dunne’s on your tail, and I think he won’t be fooled again.”

Dunne slapped the next spell out of Lilith’s hand; her eyes went black with rage. Sylvie said, “Back to work, Bran.”

“Yes,” he said. The process quickened; ghostly shoulders firmed, knots of bared tawny skin and shifting muscle that ran and flexed downward, drawing in the spine and a strong, bare thigh.

It was a bizarre sort of striptease, watching Bran’s body appear in segments from behind the veil of his power. The more he recovered shape, the more the scattered power on the roof flowed toward him and rejoined him. A defined hand, elegant and purposeful, created a long line of naked belly and narrow hips. He grazed fingertips down his newly created skin, as if he were reacquainting himself with how it felt , how it was to be a god, a being of pure will and power.

Sylvie opened her mouth to say something scathing about the need to play with himself later, but got derailed. Bran might be sculpting flesh, but he was still a painter at heart. His tracing finger suddenly left a trail in its wake, a last homage to the art he had preferred for so long. Butterflies bloomed on his skin; lapis lazuli, sunset orange, and crimson, striped and spotted, following the path his touch took, starting from his navel and swirling outward.

“Oh,” Sylvie found herself saying instead. The wings looked dusty, real, quivering with his breath. She wanted to cage them beneath her palms, feel his skin warm and flutter against hers, wanted to taste them and see if their scales would melt on her tongue like raw sugar.