Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

Sylvie was more worried about the cops. No point in stealing the car and card of a murdered woman if you were going to lead the cops on a trail right to your front door. This was enough gas to get her halfway home, then there was the cash for the rest.

She had the car’s nose turned toward the highway and home, but couldn’t make the turn. One more stop. One job left to do.

She made the loop out toward the suburbs and headed toward Anna D’s. Wreckage kept surprising her; one moment, it seemed like all the violence of the night before had been tidied away, or centered on her and the gods, the next, there were pinpoint places of utter destruction, as if a tornado had danced through the city. Or a god masquerading as a hurricane.

There were cars dented and abandoned at the side of the highway, scorched and sheared-off trees where lightning and wind had lashed out and made their mark. Water still lapped over the cracked asphalt in low sections of the road, and sometimes Sylvie caught glimpses of stranger destruction yet. Places where materials seemed to have undergone a sea change. Where retaining walls sagged like taffy and were marked as if exotic beasts had been slammed into them, leaving feathers and scale. Where broken glass had spun out of windows and made patterns like dragonbones in the ground.

Sylvie tried to imagine what things would look like if Dunne hadn’t been so concerned about the world, but she didn’t want to dwell on it. She hadn’t forgiven him for refusing to bring Demalion back.

Anna D’s apartment complex was one of the casualties. The tower looked like a skeleton of itself, taken back in time to when it was still being built. The glass facing had been blown out, and all was dark.

Sylvie parked, sat in the car, wondering if she had to do this. Anna D surely knew already. Erinya’s scratches could have come from no one else. She hesitated, waiting for that little voice to advise her, but got nothing.

Eventually, she clambered out of the car and headed toward the apartment. She nearly gave up on the first flight of stairs, but by the third, the pain was bearable—constant, but bearable, and she went on.

The apartment door was open, and Sylvie inched in and came to a dead stop. Anna D was sphinxed out in the midst of massive wreckage. Glass glittered on every surface, studded the walls, the furniture, Anna D’s russet fur.

The sphinx breathed in deep gasps, and there were bloody gashes along her sides, from the Furies on their soul hunt, from the glass explosions, Sylvie didn’t know.

“Get out,” Anna D said. Her tail lashed, tipping over an already precarious table. She didn’t even look at Sylvie. All her attention was on the tiny glass orb between her paws. It glowed faintly and showed a child in its depths, a boy with Demalion’s tawny eyes and dark hair. “Leave.”

“I had no choice,” Sylvie said. “But I am sorry—”

Miserably inadequate, she knew. Sorry was for breaking a window, staining a borrowed blouse, losing a library book. Sorry had nothing to do with the sickness in her heart, the queasy pain of a blow she had dealt herself.

Anna D swung around too quickly for Sylvie’s exhausted eyes even to follow. She ended flat on her back, glass nipping at her skin, while the sphinx loomed above her, growling.

“Sorry? Do you have any concept of the word? I should have your throat between my teeth.”

“But you don’t,” Sylvie said.

Anna D looked away, closed her amber eyes, and slunk off of Sylvie. “I don’t need to sully myself.”

“Demalion knew,” Sylvie said. “I had no choice. But he did. He didn’t have to be my weapon. Of course, the world would have ended if he hadn’t acted.”

“It’s for my son that I don’t kill you,” Anna D said. “Do not tempt me with platitudes. There is nothing you can utter to earn forgiveness from me. I will wait for the day to come when you die, in agony and alone. And I will be watching. I am eternal, and I am patient.”

“Fine, see you then. I’ll save you a front-row seat,” Sylvie said, all in one breath. Her mouth was dry, and her chest hurt. She couldn’t blame Anna D; her snark was just a way to keep the guilt from crushing her. She rose to leave.

“Do you understand what you have done, Shadows?” Anna D said, just as Sylvie moved to shut the door behind her.

Sylvie hesitated. Games again. She should have known it was too easy, but Anna D deserved her say. She eased the door back open. “I killed your son,” she confessed.

“With Lilith, fool girl. Do you understand what you have done?”

“Obviously, you were watching,” Sylvie said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“You haven’t killed her,” Anna D said.

“Beg to differ,” Sylvie snapped. Adrenaline surged in her. God, what if Anna D had seen something different? What if Lilith had survived the fall . . . ? She wished, belatedly, that she’d taken the time to limp around to the front of the ISI building, never mind the incoming agents. She should have made sure there was a body.

“You haven’t killed her,” Anna D repeated steadily. “You’ve replaced her. One murderess for another. How long do you think it will take, Shadows, before you’re pushing people into the path of danger instead of asking? Before you turn your friends into fodder, and lack even a shred of regret for it. Sorry? You’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Sylvie bridled, that inner core rising, the refusal to be cowed by anyone. “I’m human,” she said. “I don’t have cheat sheets to the future. I can only make choices as I come across them. I did nothing that I wouldn’t do again, given the same information. Your son would still be dead, and while I wish it weren’t so, I know it’s true. But I can still grieve.”

Anna D closed her eyes. “You will find no absolution here. And you’re long past your welcome.”

Sylvie pulled the door shut behind her, and this time, Anna D let her leave. Sylvie leaned against the hallway wall and fingered the small fragment of crystal in her pocket. She had been going to give it to Anna, but to what point? No, she’d keep it for herself, a reminder and a warning of where her choices could lead.

At last, nothing slowed her path out of Chicago, not the bad roads, not the slowly gathering police presence, not even the brief thought that she should tell Tish everything was all right. It wasn’t, really. As far as Tish was concerned, Bran and Dunne might as well be dead. Sylvie couldn’t really see them popping over to Tish’s next party, two gods mingling with the mortals.

Sylvie drove on, stopping at the rest area on the Illinois border to clean the worst of the blood from her skin. She turned the stained black shirt inside out and covered up the rest that way. She did it all without ever once looking at the mirror directly. Anna D’s condemnation lingered too loudly for that. Do you like what you see?

An hour later, she had to pull the car onto the shoulder while the events of the night tried to shake themselves from her bones. She laid her head against the steering wheel, shook and screamed and sobbed until she was empty and exhausted.

In Kentucky, hours later, the little dark voice muttered back to life. Stupid Old Cat. If she hadn’t hidden her own identity from Demalion, he might not have been in the line of fire at all. What kind of dutiful son would join an organization dedicated to corralling monsters, after all, when his beloved mother was one? The fault lies with her.

Sylvie felt obscurely comforted and made the rest of the drive without having to pull the car off the road for any more hysterics. A few stealthy tears here and there hardly counted. She stopped instead for a big gulp of caffeine and nuclear-cheese nachos, a king-size Snickers bar, and a bag of beef jerky, scarfed them down somewhere in Georgia, and gave her body enough fuel to make it the rest of the way home.