Lies & Omens

2 Unwelcome News

IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT AND STARTING TO STORM BY THE TIME SYLVIE made it back to her apartment. The flash and crash of the night suited her mood well enough. Three days spent hunting witches for Lupe, and she’d managed to chase down a single reference to a brujo who specialized in shape-shifting curses and cures. It had been a long shot for a lot of reasons, most especially because he was supposed to live in Orlando. Sylvie knew it was unfair, but she couldn’t take a Mouse-City witch seriously.

He’d been the real deal, though. He’d also been long gone when she got there, chased out of the city by the Green Swamp werewolf pack, who didn’t like a witch encroaching near their territory. It had been a long drive for nothing. He hadn’t left a forwarding address.

She shrugged off her jacket, removed her holster, looked at the empty shelves of her fridge, and called for Thai. If only all her problems could be solved that easily.

Sometimes, there were things that just couldn’t be fixed. She wasn’t ready to consign Lupe to that file, not when her curse was Sylvie’s fault, but all the signs were there.

A god’s curse on a mortal was a nightmare of pantheon politics and power. Usually, the only way those curses were removed was by the god forgiving the mortal. Tepeyollotl, even if he wanted to, no longer had the ability to take back his curse; he’d lost that power to Azpiazu, then to Erinya.

Even if Erinya had his power, it wasn’t her curse to remove. Gods didn’t interfere with other gods’ punishments, not unless they were willing to war over it. From what Sylvie understood, all the pantheons were carefully circling each other in a wary cease-fire.

Even so, maybe Erinya could help.

Sylvie shook her head. Asking Erinya for aid was a bit like asking the pyromaniac neighbor kid for help with a campfire. Something would burn, all right. The campfire, the trees, the houses. Erinya was a resource best left untapped.

Besides, Sylvie and Erinya were negotiating a wary truce of their own. Erinya wanted to hunt Demalion down. Sylvie had stopped her from doing so. She wasn’t ready to rock that boat.

The doorbell buzzed, and Sylvie shook herself into movement, grabbing for her wallet.

She had just paid the delivery boy for three cartons of Thai when all the fine hairs on the back of her neck stretched toward the ceiling. She waved off her change and braced herself before turning around.

She should have expected it. Ordering late-night Thai was like sending up the Bat-Signal. Erinya tended to mooch whenever she could.

Erinya’s habit of popping into Sylvie’s tiny Miami apartment made Sylvie crazy, but she marked it up as part of the price to be paid. Erinya hadn’t turned full god on her own. Sylvie had basically force-fed her the power. Now Erinya kept a close eye on her.

Sylvie regretted her actions at least once a day. But if she hadn’t done it, a vengeful and broken Mesoamerican god would have turned Miami into a feeding ground, and there’d be no chance of delivery food after a long and hellish day, so maybe Sylvie had made the right choice after all.

The looming presence in her living room grew stronger, took on a crackle of lightning. “Yeah, yeah,” Sylvie said. “Let me get you a fork—”

It wasn’t Erinya making herself at home, propping her booted feet up on Sylvie’s long-suffering couch, staining the pale fabric with indescribable bits of destroyed “sinners.” Or flouncing around in her punk-goth wear—torn plaid skirts, fishnets, and spiky hair—demanding that Sylvie stop what she was doing and pay attention to her.

Instead, a man, midway between six feet and seven stood there, looking mildly disappointed. He had a kind face, but Sylvie’s guts clenched hard; she dropped the cartons, fumbling for her weapon, though she knew there was nothing in hell she could do to stop him if he’d come gunning for her.

He might look human. Until you took a more careful look. Beneath his skin, an entire sky roiled, a landscape of lightning-struck clouds and looming thunderheads. She’d met him before. Worked for him once. Solved his case to his satisfaction.

She still counted him an enemy. Not least because he was her introduction to the messed-up world of godly politics: Kevin Dunne, onetime human, now the Greek god of Justice.

He frowned; her gun transferred itself from her hand to his. “I need to talk to you.”

“Not interested,” Sylvie said. She wanted to slip out into the night, but running was the wrong thing to do. The worst thing she could do.

The god of Justice was like any human cop on earth in that respect. Running equaled guilt.

Sylvie turned her back on him though it made her inner instincts protest, and picked up the dropped cartons. She found the one with the mee grob, grabbed the chopsticks, retreated to her couch, and did her best to pretend he was a particularly stubborn hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation and too much exposure to witchcraft in the past week.

She clicked on the TV, turned the volume to destroy-all-possibility-of-conversation, and he sighed. The tiny sign of displeasure shuddered down her spine, made her first mouthful of spicy-sweet goodness utterly mechanical. An act of will to chew her food and not give him the satisfaction of looking rattled.

He sighed again, and the TV muted itself.

She swallowed, and said, “Godly powers cover remote control of television? Who knew? Maybe your lot is handy after all.”

“Shadows,” he said, and took a seat opposite her on a chair that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She tried not to like him for conjuring up a squashy, comfortable, obviously aged recliner. It’d be easier to keep up her hatred if he had magicked himself a throne.

“A throne?” he asked, reading her mind easily. “What have I ever done to make you have such a low opinion of me?”

“You blackmailed me into working for you. You let your Furies kill my lover when he was helping to save yours.”

“Demalion came back,” Dunne said.

Sylvie felt her heart stop, her breath lock up, as if she’d suffered a sudden blow to her chest. He wasn’t supposed to know that.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” he said, and yeah, it hurt to admit, but Sylvie had hoped that the god of Justice would have missed Demalion’s less-than-triumphant return.

“Don’t hurt him,” Sylvie said. It wasn’t pleading. It was a command, came out rough and certain and angry. It felt like a plea. What could she do to stop him?

“Erinya told me not to.”

“Told you not to.” And dammit, he’d drawn her into talking to him. Last she’d heard, Erinya took orders, didn’t give them.

“That’s why I’m here. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“I’ve done a lot of things, most of which you disapprove of,” Sylvie said. “If I recall, you considered me … what was it? A trigger-happy vigilante? You would have let your Furies kill me except that you needed me.”

“You gave Erinya god-power. You released her from my pantheon. She’s running loose, killing people at will, changing the world, and she’s only getting started.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Sylvie said. “Christ, Dunne, she comes here afterward to tell me about it. In detail. Graphic detail. She doesn’t wash up first. It puts me off my food. And I’ve had to have the carpet professionally cleaned. Twice.”

“So you understand it’s a problem—”

“It’s your problem. You know why you’re pissed?” Sylvie was off the couch, in his face, her hands braced on either arm of his recliner, leaning over him in a way that had her common sense yelping in terror. “She’s killing people at her will. Not yours. The only difference between Erinya now and Erinya three months ago? She’s choosing the targets.”

Dunne was gone from the chair, the chair vanished; Sylvie tumbled forward, caught herself, and found him behind her again. “Vigilante justice. I shouldn’t be surprised you approve.”

“I was out of options, Dunne. I had to protect my city, my world. There were only two choices left: me or Erinya. Would you rather I have kept the power for myself? Turned myself into a god?”

It took some effort to startle a god, since mind reading was as natural as breathing for them, but Sylvie had managed it. Dunne sat back again, this time on her couch, as if his concentration had been blown so thoroughly he couldn’t even spare a thought for a familiar chair. He studied her, his brown-eyed, human gaze altering bit by bit until there was only a band of churning grey god-stuff instead of a human face.

No eyes, and yet Sylvie felt as seen as she had ever been.

“I hadn’t been aware that was possible,” he said slowly.

“Surprised the hell out of me,” Sylvie said. “But so much for your godly omniscience.” She was surprised to find that she felt disappointed. She had questions, and though she’d never wanted Dunne here, she’d been hoping to get some answers out of him now that he was. But he just looked blank.

Probably adding up how many people she might kill if she stuck around longer than a mortal’s span of years.

That was the thing about god-power. It was heady stuff. Strong stuff. The kind of stuff that blew a mortal body into pieces. A human couldn’t hold god-power unless they held immortality first. The only way Dunne had made the transition was by his lover, Eros, granting him immortality first. Even then, by Erinya’s accounts, Dunne had nearly gone mad under the weight of godly power.

Sylvie had held the god-power for a horrifying minute, had even used it. She still woke from nightmares about those actions: using that kind of power, containing that kind of power—it had made her want to claw her insides out. Repulsive. Repellent. Wrong.

“The new Lilith,” Dunne said thoughtfully. “You replaced her.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’ve heard that.”

Sylvie waited to see if he’d elaborate on the theme. If he’d let slip what being the new Lilith actually meant.

He merely said, “I see.”

“So I’ve been told. You want to tell me what that means?”

“You don’t know?”

“Would I ask if I knew?” Sylvie let all her irritation and frustration come to the surface. She made it a point of not asking things she could find out on her own.

“You’ll figure it out eventually,” he said.

“I’m impatient, sue me,” Sylvie said. “Spit it out, Dunne.”

He stood, rolled his shoulders; the light in the room shivered as if the storm core of him were passing overhead, dimming the real world. “You’re her replacement. You kill things that shouldn’t be killable.”

Sylvie threw her carton of Thai food at him in sheer, sudden rage. He didn’t dodge; the carton replaced itself on the table, not a single noodle spilled. “Look, asshole—” she said, and somehow that was the mistake. Maybe it was leftover cop, reacting to being disrespected, maybe it was his own burst of impatience—he loomed over her and pinned her to her couch with a look.

Thunder rumbled inside her apartment; the smell of cold rain was bright and strong and sharp, laced with the threat of lightning. When she looked up at him, there was nothing human in his shape, only churning cloud.

“You never thought about her at all, did you?” Dunne asked. “You killed her, and you didn’t know her. Did you ever think it strange that she opposed her god so fiercely, acted against him as she could, and was never punished? She birthed monsters to destroy his peoples, and he did nothing. She walked with demons and erased the protective charms men put on their homes—she laughed when the demons crept inside and devoured his blessed children. And he did nothing.”

She coughed, tore her eyes away from the angry, hypnotic surge of storm cloud, and said, “So he has a hands-off policy—”

“He created her. He had a purpose for her. You killed her. Now that purpose is yours. Lilith lived thousands of years and never was called to fulfill her purpose. His purpose. I don’t know what it is, but I bet you won’t like it. Whatever it is, it’s important enough that he let her get away with murder.”

“Stop,” she said. Her heart raced in her chest, painful and panicky. She twisted, tried to escape his psychic grip. “Stop.” She didn’t know what the new Lilith was? Maybe because she’d never wanted to. Maybe it was safer not to know. More bearable.

“You’ll be alive for a very long time, Shadows. Until he has need of you. Or until you’re … replaced by another of her lineage, another shortsighted killer hungry for blood, filled with rage, refusing to bow to anyone.”

“I don’t want it,” she said. Her throat crackled with dryness; her voice disappeared beneath the thunder of his presence.

“Oh, you know that lesson,” he said. “We don’t always get what we want. I wanted a nice, orderly system for meting out justice. I got a Fury-turned-god wreaking havoc.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked. She felt horrifyingly close to tears. Blamed his presence for it, a sort of evil osmosis—the storm core of him drawing her salt tears to the surface. Her entire apartment smelled like a squall at sea.

“Stop her.”

Sylvie laughed, a fierce crow of stunned disbelief. “What, you want me to do the job? She might be a god, but she’s small potatoes compared to you. Deal with her yourself.”

“She’s not mine anymore,” he said. “A pantheon of her own. Not a Fury. If I act against her, it’s war across the heavens. You created her. Stop her. Kill her if you have to.”

“She’s my … friend,” Sylvie said, and surprised herself by meaning it. That knowledge bolstered her, took her out of her own fears. So what if God had a purpose for her. She didn’t have to do it. She didn’t have to do what Dunne wanted, either.

“She’s your responsibility.”

“Fuck you,” Sylvie said.

Dunne rocked back, going human-shaped again. His eyes narrowed; suddenly, he didn’t look as gentle as he usually did in human form. “You want to use her against your enemies.”

“No,” Sylvie said. She crossed her arms over her chest, thought clearly how much she wanted him to go the hell away.

He ignored her, and said, “You already have. You sicced her on the ISI after you disposed of Azpiazu.”

“I asked her to make us an exit,” Sylvie said. “That’s all.”

Dunne flicked his gaze TV-ward. The channels shifted, blurred, landed on a local news station that wasn’t local at all. The banner beneath said it was Channel 8, Dallas/Fort Worth. And it was yesterday’s breaking news. The volume wound up; the newscaster shouted disaster into the room. An entire work force found dead, all asphyxiated at their desks. Forty people.

The news report suggested a gas leak.

“That’s the Dallas ISI,” Dunne said.

“I know that,” Sylvie said. She kept track of their branches, knew the buildings they took over. The Dallas ISI was based out of a lakeside marina. The facade was distinctive, cement slabbed with a faded trio of white sails against blue waves. The boats slipped there looked normal but all belonged to the government. Expensive camouflage.

The TV flickered, shifted again. “How about this one? I know you recognize it. Or what’s left of it.”

She didn’t at first. It was a picture as horrible and meaningless to her as a foreign disaster—all broken slabs of beige stone, glittering with dusty glass, crawling with reflected emergency lights and first responders. It was the cops’ caps that tipped her off, sparked recognition out of anonymity: Chicago cops in late-afternoon sunlight. The video clips were choppy, cameras held by a series of unsteady hands before the professionals arrived. Flashes of gold light flared like special effects every so often, the dust catching and reflecting the lights.

The broken walls weren’t beige; they were granite covered with sand. The skyscrapers to either side, though damaged, were familiar enough. The collapsed building was the Chicago ISI. Where she had killed Lilith. Where a resurrected Demalion worked.

The announcers were reading off death tolls like ghouls, adding new bodies on a ticker in the corner of the screen. Seventy-six dead. No, seventy-nine. No, eighty-three.

A pained, broken breath overrode the announcers. It took her a moment to realize it had been hers. Not possible. She’d talked to him just two days prior, and he’d been too run off his feet for anything more than just a hi, miss you, wish you were here, sorry we fought. Hadn’t even been long enough to argue over anything.

“Do you see?” Dunne said.

She scrubbed hard at her blurring eyes, understood what he was implying and the sheer manipulative gall of it scoured away her fear and pain. “You’re a bastard and a liar,” she said, couldn’t muster enough strength to make it more than a furious whisper. “Erinya didn’t do this.”

It wasn’t the Fury’s style. Erinya loved the visceral taste of battle. She wouldn’t kill by alleged gas, wouldn’t drop a building on her foes. She’d wade through their blood or consider it not worth doing.

“No,” he admitted. “But she could have. You sent her after the ISI. She’s cunning in her own way, could easily decide that your command not to hurt Demalion was overridden by your desire to hurt the ISI. While she might be a small god comparatively, the world’s still going to bend to her will the longer she lingers in it.”

“Is that even real?” Sylvie asked, gesturing at the TV. “Or is it a sick object lesson?” She pushed off from the couch, pushed past him—felt that nauseating vibration, that subsonic wrongness that indicated power—and leaned on her kitchen counter, stared at the dark mass of her backup gun in the half-open drawer. It gaped at her like an angry mouth. Metal shone within, a black tongue.

“It’s real—” he started.

She turned, gun in hand, and fired until the clip was empty, making a violent thunder of her own.

Meaningless, of course.

The only thing she’d killed was her wall. Dunne was gone. The bullet holes in the thick plaster wall and the couch—changed from cream faux suede to a dark leather with brass nailheads at the arms and back—were the only signs that he’d been there at all. A reminder he had to have left deliberately. Gods changed things by their presence. Not all of the changes were as harmless as updating her furniture.

Sylvie set the gun down with a shaking hand and grabbed her cell phone.

Demalion’s phone rang and rang on the other end. No matter how often she dialed, he didn’t answer.