Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

The dark voice within her purred uncertainly, stopping and starting like a faulty engine.

“Give me this,” he repeated.

She hesitated—give him what ? His touch was within her, but wanting what? She couldn’t tell. Everything in her throbbed to his presence.

“Sylvie, now. . . .” The determination in his voice decided her. Anything he wanted that badly could only be a good thing.

Yes, she thought. She didn’t have to say it aloud, not with him so close, within her skin. . . . He pulled, and Sylvie screamed as her entire soul woke to blazing pain.

If Sylvie had ever doubted the dark voice was hers, she didn’t any longer: As Bran tugged on it, it felt like he ripped free a piece of her soul.

Panting for breath, her eyes stinging with tears, she could only stare up at his face. His pretty-boy looks hardened. Something dark touched his eyes, something unforgiving. Black bloomed along his collarbone, like the butterflies had along his belly, though it was her doing, her soul’s design. A serpent coiled around his throat, tail to head, forked tongue flickering down from the divot in his collarbone.

The spell light from Lilith’s casting sucked into his skin all at once, and he stood, graceful, beautiful, and newly deadly with Sylvie’s borrowed strength of will.

Sylvie rolled to keep him in her sights. The sudden change raised the hairs on her neck. Lilith, grappling with Dunne, felt the change in the air as well and broke free of Dunne’s grip. “What did you do?” she spat.

“Does it matter how you lost? Or just that you have,” Bran said. “I trusted you, Lilith. I believed you were my friend. You’re not capable of it. And if you can’t even be a friend, you sure as hell aren’t fit to be god of Love. As much as I hate the responsibility, you have to give it all back.”

He didn’t wait for her response, if she had any to give. Bran simply opened his arms to the world, and in a series of golden flashes, he took it all back. First the loose power, still coiling about the rooftop, then the power caught in Lilith’s lure, and, finally, to the sound of Lilith shrieking, took back the power she had absorbed herself.

He collected the spindles with a single command, and snapped them between his fingers. “It’s all mine. My power. My lover.”

Dunne rose to his feet, all wordless, animal rage, and caught Lilith in a paralyzing grip, a hand on each arm as if he meant to rip her apart like a paper doll. The power he had absorbed from the Furies, Sylvie thought, tipped the balance. Gave him a taste of their insatiable hunger for vengeance. He fisted his clawed hand and angled it for the best blow to take Lilith’s heart.

“Don’t,” Bran said. He wrapped his arms around Dunne’s chest, leaned his head on Dunne’s shoulder, rubbed his cheek, catlike, against him. “Don’t.” It wasn’t a plea, but a command.

Dunne’s voice was a wreck when he got a word out finally, the sound of a man who’d buried language beneath rage. “She—”

“She’s not ours to judge,” Bran said. “Take down your shields; a verdict is waiting for her beyond it.”

Held against the edge of the roof, bloodied at chest, and utterly human, Lilith still dredged up spite enough to say, “If you’re waiting for Him to judge me, you’re wasting your time. He’s had eternity to do so, and so far, He ignores me. I rather think He has some purpose for me, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you tear out my heart than let Him have His way. Kill me; bring on your wars in heaven. . . . If I can’t defeat Him, maybe you can.”

Sylvie shivered, wondering if that was what she had looked like, defying Dunne, dangerous even while cornered. Deeply, rabidly unsafe. If Sylvie kept getting up, what could Lilith do if Dunne released her . . . ?

Well, she could think of one thing. Sylvie joined Bran’s side, and said, “If you kill her, all you worked to save will be in jeopardy. Killing another god’s favored subject. She’s right about that. He’s had millennia to stop her, to punish her. Take down your shield.”

“It is not just,” Dunne said. “Alekta died. Men died. The world was endangered. Bran was—”

“Kevin,” Bran said. “Please.”

And that was it. Dunne sighed; the shields came down. The riot of angels outside flared back, startlement in their bright, insectile eyes, their narrow faces.

“We return her to you,” Bran said. “Bloodied but unbowed. The Olympians have no quarrel with your master.”

The largest angel nodded once, perfectly still, silent as always; the rest spilled upward and faded from sight. Lilith turned to look at her captor, lips a thin line. “Still, He doesn’t come for me, but sends His puppet. I suppose it doesn’t matter. At least this time I got some of His attention. I’ll try again.”

“No,” Sylvie said. “You won’t.” Dunne’s head rose sharply from where he had been pressing a kiss to Bran’s throat. With the last of her strength, Sylvie pushed.

Lilith clawed at Sylvie’s arms, scoring bloody marks deep into the flesh, but it was too late.

“I may be your daughter. But I am also Cain’s child,” Sylvie whispered. Lilith’s grip faltered, eyes widening in shock; she reached for something to throw back at Sylvie, but her stolen power was gone, her borrowed spells gone, her invulnerability gone, and she was just a woman with a ten-story drop rising to meet her.

Sylvie watched her fall until her body was swallowed by distance and darkness, while the angel bore witness with expressionless eyes.

SYLVIE BACKED AWAY FROM THE ROOF EDGE, CALM AND CONTENT, even over the worry that the angel might not be pleased with her. But really, what could it do? Angels were soldiers, nothing more, their lives wrapped in heavenly red tape and orders.

The angels had come to ensure that the Greek gods didn’t tamper with His property. They hadn’t. Sylvie had. Sylvie was only human when all was said and done, and if one human killed another, it was only business as usual.

The angel rose into the sky like a meteor defying gravity, streaks of white and gold and fire’s-heart scarlet unfolding in its wings. It stopped before her, stood weightlessly in the sky, eyes like insects, glossy and black, looking into her mind and soul. “Sylvie, Daughter of Lilith and Cain. He knows thee,” it said. It soared upward and disappeared in the rising sun.

Not good, she and the dark voice thought in unison. Always a momentous thing when an angel actually spoke. Much less spoke your name.

It wasn’t the angel, though, whose eyes remained an uncomfortable weight on her skin, an itch along her nerves. Sylvie looked over her shoulder at the two silent gods behind her. “Oh, don’t play that game. You wanted it done. I got it done. You outsourced the wetwork is all. The Furies did it for you before, and you can’t tell me you’re sorry I did it now.”

Dunne stayed silent, the thinned line of his mouth disapproving, even as he drew Bran closer to him, stroked his skin.

Sylvie threw up her hands. “Do I need to remind you—she took Bran, kept him in a cage, and was waiting for him to die? Do I need to point out you were about to kill her yourself? What I did—”

“Matricide,” Dunne said with the voice of the Furies.

“Enough,” Bran said simultaneously. “You’ve made your point.”

“Have I?” Sylvie said. “She twisted my mind. A man died for it. An innocent man.”

Dunne’s face stiffened; Demalion hadn’t been innocent in his eyes. Sylvie shifted gears, hunted broader truths. “Lilith has manipulated, hurt, and killed people for millennia. She courted war in heaven. She endangered the world. What I did was justice, long overdue.”