Sins & Shadows

25 Looking for a Way Home

BURKE, THE DRIVER, WAS THE HARD-EYED MAN SYLVIE HAD LAST seen leaping off a subway platform, but he took one look as they spilled onto the van’s floor—wet, bedraggled, shivering—and cranked the heater to full.

“HQ?” Burke said.

Demalion nodded. “Full speed,” he said.

Burke pulled the van into motion. Kneeling up, Sylvie saw the shell of Dunne’s home vanishing behind them, her last glimpse of it the pale blue of St. Elmo’s fires devouring its bones. The van turned onto higher ground, taking them into the heart of the city. It was a strange new world in this storm light. Chicago’s tall buildings glimmered and developed uncanny life under the influence of the battling gods. Ornamental art deco fripperies swayed like anemones, took on luminous edges that gleamed through the darkness. In their phosphorescent glow, gargoyles left their moorings and skittered across facades of buildings, talons chinking into plate-glass windows and leaving little starburst fractures behind.

The city felt drowned in power. Two buildings, leaning close, tangled their carved eaves in some slow undersea waltz.

The sky was livid, bruised black and green; lightning seared a white-hot line across Sylvie’s retinas, and she jerked back, slamming into the van’s layers of hard plastic and metal. Surveillance equipment, all useless now, unable to show what was truly happening. The LED colors blinked idly, red, green, amber, taking the pulse of the city, recording bits and pieces of mysteries that might never be solved.

Right now, tired as she was, she’d have traded them all for a single bench seat. Scuffling noises drew her attention through the dimness. Rodrigo was rummaging through a duffel.

Demalion leaned close, stroking his hand up her arm, finding her shoulder, putting his mouth close to her ear. She didn’t think it was going to be for sweet nothings, and his first words proved her right. “Which god?”

She sighed. Always something more with him.

“Sylvie,” he murmured, and the heat of his breath against her chilled skin made her shudder. “It’s dangerous not to know. I want to follow your lead, but you have to share. Prove yourself worthy of trust.”

“Eros,” she whispered back into the curve of his neck. The name seemed to have thundering weight in the world. The rain, drumming on the roof, faltered for a bare second, as if the sky were listening also. She put her hand up to stop him from blindly repeating it. “Don’t.”

Across the van, Bran watched her, unblinking, until Rodrigo pushed a black sweater over his head. “Arms,” Rodrigo said, and Sylvie grimaced at the god of Love being fussed over like a toddler. Bran pushed the too-long sleeves up afterward, looking insanely frail.

Playing to his audience, she thought. Ensuring Rodrigo would stay protective. Good enough. The more helpless the ISI thought him, the less likely they were to keep him. More eyes on her, and she found that Burke kept shooting looks back over his shoulder as he steered.

Sylvie followed his line of sight, and said, “Oh for God’s sake. So the shirt’s transparent. Get over it and drive before I push you out of the car.”

Demalion broke into a laugh, muffled it in her shoulder, then drew back, studying her, unsmiling. “What are you looking at, blind man?”

He reached out and traced a pattern on the sopping back of her shirt, centering between her shoulder blades. “Tattoo,” he said. “Cedo Nulli. The same phrase Lilith used for her password. Coincidence?”

Aware of Rodrigo’s gaze sharpening, of Bran’s recoil, Sylvie said abruptly, “Consanguinity.”

He stiffened, and she said, “Don’t give me that. At least I didn’t inherit a tail.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“You’re clever. Figure it out.”

“Old Cat,” Bran said.

“Hey,” Sylvie objected. “He can figure it out. If you want to ‘help’ so much, how ’bout you unblind him. Cryst-o-vision might be nifty, but he can’t hold a gun.”

“I didn’t say that,” Demalion said.

“You gave me your gun,” she said. “You didn’t need to say anything.” It warmed her heart, it really did. He trusted her to kill for him. “C’mon, Bran, even you have to see that having your point man blind isn’t a good thing.”

“I can’t—” Bran said, and stopped. She wasn’t surprised: She’d felt her expression change. Harden. Darken.

He licked his lips, dropped his gaze, and started again. “It’s Kevin’s will that did it.”

“With your power threaded through his,” Sylvie said. “Doesn’t that give you an in? The oubliette, which was keyed to you, opened for him.” She kept her voice conversational though she could feel Demalion bird-dog tense beside her, eager to be healed. She wanted to know if she could talk Bran into something rather than bully him into it.

Bran sighed. “I can try.”

“That’s better than can’t,” she said. “But how ’bout you just do?”

The van lurched, wheels slipping on wet asphalt, and Bran let himself fall forward into Demalion’s lap.

From her vantage point, Sylvie twitched. Bran looked up into Demalion’s blind face in an assessing way that made her want to yank him right off Demalion’s lap and slap him. The worst part was she wasn’t sure if it was jealousy driving it or sheer unabashed possessiveness. Demalion was hers, dammit. Or would be. If he proved himself trustworthy. If he didn’t feed both her and Bran into the ISI mills.

She bit back the growl in her throat, kept it unvoiced. Demalion didn’t need the ego stroke. Bran, though, he heard it, again showing the uncanny awareness of things relating to love. He smirked and stroked Demalion’s arms beneath his wet sleeves. Demalion’s breath hitched.

The van rocked again, and water splashed up alongside with such force that it sloshed over the high windows. Sylvie took the opportunity to escape Bran’s game and crawled forward through the jolting van, collecting a bruise on her shoulder when she failed to adjust to a sudden swerve and clipped a computer console.

She crouched beside the driver’s seat. “Bad roads?”

“Rain,” he said. His hands were white on the steering wheel. “This is definitely not natural.”

“The fact that it’s coming down hard enough to flake asphalt didn’t clue you in earlier?” Sylvie sniped. The road was degrading, turning to a crumbling, jagged mess that threatened their tires. She took another look, realized exactly how dense the rain was ahead of them, and winced. “It’s been doing this all night? It is night, right?” It was hard to tell. She’d lost time in the oubliette, and the skies were apocalypse dark. She took a look at the speedometer and sighed. They were creeping along the roads, at a bare ten miles per hour, and as much as she mocked the ISI, she couldn’t even blame him for it. Not in this weather. Not when strange shadows swept the night to either side of them. When behind all the dark windows, people’s fears might be taking on a new life—all it took was a little talent and spillover from Dunne or Zeus. She wasn’t going to tell him any of that, though.

“Acid rain, whatever. I don’t care. It’s been doing that for over twenty-four hours,” he said. “But it wasn’t parting for us before.” Burke goosed the accelerator, pushing the van into the sheets of water before them; the wheels slipped a little. Rain pounded the roof of the van for a bare second and stopped, like a switch had been thrown. Now that Sylvie paid attention, she realized she’d been hearing that sound pretty much constantly, a low, intermittent drumming. He swerved hard to the right, erupted into rain. It ceased again.

“We’re carrying valuable cargo,” she said. She licked her dry lips again, felt a tiny pain, tasted salt. Somewhere in the evening, she’d bitten it, or had it hit hard enough to bleed. “Someone’s paying attention.” She ignored his questioning glance, not inclined to share more information than that with the ISI.

Behind her, she heard Bran murmuring, “You know, it’s traditional to make an offering when asking a god for aid.”

“I didn’t ask,” Demalion said, and his tone was so strained that Sylvie’s attention swerved back. He held Bran close, protecting him from the jolting of the van, but his jaw was tight and tense. “Sylvie asked.”

“Jesus,” Sylvie said, rejoining them in the back, dropping to the floor with a thump that rattled her bones. “You haven’t fixed him by now? What have you been doing?”

“Fixed is a bad word,” Demalion said. “Fixed is what you do to your dog.” He seized on the possibility of banter with such enthusiasm that Sylvie knew he was scared.

“Just making sure he understands what I’m going to do,” Bran said. “I can’t reverse the curse. I can alter it. But it doesn’t absolve him of the sins that Kevin punished him for.”

Rodrigo smiled in mindless agreement, nodding, blissed out by Bran’s presence. Sylvie slapped his shoulder speculatively, and he merely rocked back and forth. Bran’s spell might have been too strong. This close to the object of his worship, for this long, Rodrigo had stopped functioning. She wondered what would happen if she slapped Bran, instead.

“I make no apologies,” Demalion said. “I did my job to the best of my abilities.” His breath was coming fast, a little panicked, and from the way he clutched at the crystals in his hands, Sylvie thought even his clairvoyance was being balked now.

“Bran,” she warned. He ignored her completely.

Bran shifted closer in his lap, pressed his lips to Demalion’s neck, and said, “That’s been the excuse for countless acts of atrocity. Aren’t you a thinking man?”

Demalion’s eyes were pure silver now, as reflective as mirrors. Sylvie wondered if Anna D would be able to scry through her son’s eyes, and slid to one side, just in case. She had enough problems already without getting the sphinx in a hissy fit.

Demalion regained his poise, and said, “Dunne was a source of unusual and unknown power. I owed it to my employers, my city, and my country, to assess the situation accurately, the better to protect my world. So, yes, I followed my orders. I judged them fair and worthy of being obeyed.”

“You ruined everything,” Bran said. “Everything.” He put his head in his hands. “All I wanted was to live in peace. To be myself and happy with Kevin. And then you came, and Lilith—I want to hate you so much.”

Demalion’s stern face softened. He might not have been able to see Bran’s beauty to be seduced by it, but the voice was powerful enough to have an effect, Sylvie thought.

“You can’t,” she said. “Can you? Not because you think Demalion has a point, which he does, mind you, but because you can’t hate—”

“I lack that fire,” Bran admitted.

“What burns hot but can’t keep a body warm?” Sylvie said, under her breath. Demalion and Bran turned identical expressions of startlement on her; she shrugged. “Sorry. Thinking of the sphinx.”

Bran made a moue. Apparently, the sphinx was unpopular all the way around, if even he wasn’t a fan.

“Sphinx,” Demalion said. “There’s another monster in all this?”

Sylvie let out a breath. So not the time to get into that. “Bran, we’re under the gun. Pick up the pace.”

Bran leaned back against Demalion, and Demalion fended him off, one palm flat against Bran’s chest, one fist holding a crystal with white-knuckled intensity. “Just the eyes,” Demalion said. “Nothing else.”

“I don’t understand,” Bran said.

“No Rodrigo specials,” Sylvie said. She waved at him, flipped him off, and Rodrigo ignored her completely, still blissed out on Bran. “No ‘love me, love me’ force-fed into his veins. Rodrigo might as well be meat at this point. We need Demalion whole, sane, and sharp-witted.”

“If I’m going to love someone,” Demalion said, “I want it to be my choice.”

“I understand,” Bran whispered. “Didn’t I choose my own life? My own lover?” He knelt up, blew a stream of air across Demalion’s eyes. When Demalion’s eyes blinked shut, Bran kissed the closed lids, right then left, and followed with a lingering kiss on Demalion’s forehead above the third eye.

Wonder what that’ll do to his clairvoyance, Sylvie thought.

Demalion’s hands, fisted tight around the crystals, suddenly spasmed and collapsed inward. His arms twitched; veins popped as if something had blocked their flow. “Bran,” Sylvie said. “Heal not hurt.”

Demalion groaned deep in his throat, through clenched teeth. His body shivered through tiny seizures.

“Shh,” Bran whispered, “ ’s tricky, this.”

Demalion fell out of Bran’s embrace, gasping, eyes wide and strained. The distortion in his veins raced upward, bulging through his shoulder into his neck.

Demalion’s eyes went blank and glassy, the eyes of a corpse, and his body fell limp. Sylvie shoved Bran out of the way, grabbed Demalion’s collar, got her hands on his throat. His pulse was strong, as was her relief. He blinked, and his eyes—changed. First from mirror blind back to his usual dark espresso, but then, before Sylvie could let out her held breath, his eyes lost color, ending as gold and as glossy as heartless topaz. The pupils rounded, then slitted catlike, before rounding outward again.

“What did you do?” She let Demalion go and shook Bran. She got in two good shakes before Rodrigo lunged forward and stopped her—They all fell into a tangle of limbs; she elbowed him in the throat, and Rodrigo yelped hoarsely. She kicked again and hit something unyielding—the driver’s seat. Burke snapped at them from the front. “Trying to concentrate! Keep it down back there!”

“I did what you asked,” Bran said, extricating himself from beneath her and Rodrigo with a muttered curse. “Kevin remade his vision. I couldn’t restore what had never changed as far as his body was concerned. That takes a full-powered god. I just . . .”

“What did you do?” she asked.

“He had two genetic choices,” Bran said. “Kevin’s spell blinded the man. I sort of . . . switched tracks on his genetic line, went the monster route?” Her hands fell away from his sweater, and he said, “Hey, he can see now. That’s what you wanted. . . .”

“Demalion,” she said. “You can see?”

His voice was rough, furred with pain and amazement when he finally woke from the abstracted trance he seemed to be in. “It’s not like it used to be,” Demalion said, blinking. He closed his right eye, looked through the left, then reversed it. The pupils slitted and flared. “It’s—Sylvie—it’s more. It’s—there are patterns. I was a clairvoyant, could see things that happened out of my sight. But this . . . Now, I think I saw bits of my future.” He rubbed at his head, and sighed, obviously at a loss for explanation.

“Old Cat,” Bran muttered.

Demalion’s attention swerved; his eyes flared. “Old Cat? What the hell are you—”

“Can you shoot straight?” she interrupted. Unmasking his genealogy in an ISI surveillance van was a capital-B-bad idea. Burke was casting disturbed glances back their way.

“You are a scary woman. But yes, I can shoot again. Hell, I might be able to shoot around corners at this point.”

The van swerved again; rain splashed, ceased, and Sylvie snapped, “Stop playing with the rain, Burke, or I’m going to come up there and take my bad mood out on you.”

“It’s . . .” Burke said, the van slowing. His hands shook on the wheel. “It’s not rain anymore. It’s blood.”

Sylvie beat Demalion to the front by a nose, and peered out. Her view was rapidly eclipsed by Bran, who lunged over her and jerked the window open. Blood spattered across his hands, his face. He brought his palms up to cover his eyes. His shoulders shook. He scrubbed at his face as if he could unsee it but only managed to smear the blood into his skin.

The rain’s grey needles changed to a slippery darkness that ran the streets, foaming at the curbs. The rain-free zone over the van wavered and closed in, blood falling stickily and staining the windshield, obliterating even the minimal line of sight they’d had before.

Sylvie shuddered. If the storm cloud was Dunne, the rain sprang from his soul, his immortal body. That was why it had parted for them, Dunne instinctively easing his lover’s path. Rain turned to blood—

“He’s hurt, isn’t he?” Sylvie said. “Zeus did him some real damage.” She watched the wipers sheet blood from one side of the windshield to the other, catching in the small cracks that the heavy rain had created.

“Yes,” Bran whispered, his face pale beneath the streaks of his lover’s blood. His lips lost color.

Demalion leaned into Sylvie, and said, “You were counting on Dunne, weren’t you?”

“We still are,” she said. Lilith was still out there somewhere, awaiting her chance. Sylvie’s skin prickled in waves of gooseflesh; she rubbed her arms fiercely, listening to her little dark voice growling a litany of warning. Lilith was smart. Too smart to waste time hunting them through the storm when she had to know how limited Sylvie’s resources were. When the ISI were the only resource she had left. Lilith was sitting somewhere, warm and dry, waiting for her ISI lackeys to give her a call.

“Best to go on as we’ve begun,” Sylvie said. “Not a lot of choice left. Dunne knows where we’re heading; no injury short of death will stop him. And gods? They don’t die easy.”

Bran turned to look at her, eyes wet, but he nodded. “That’s right. That’s right.” If he sounded like he was trying to convince himself, Sylvie chose to ignore it.

“That’s fine, but we’re not driving anywhere in this,” Burke said. “I can’t even see the road.”

“It’s the straight line in front of you,” Sylvie said. “Just go slow.”

“I can’t see, Shadows!”

“I can,” Demalion said. His pupils widened and shone. “Old Cat, right?” His expression was grim, beginning to piece it together. “Burke, move over.”

“No way, Demalion. No way in hell.” Burke put his hand on his gun butt. “I’m not letting you kill us all.”

A particularly vivid line of lightning etched itself across the sky, a long, jagged whip that started out phosphorescent white and lasted long enough to turn blue and red as it burned the clouds. Sylvie’s hair crackled and popped with all the power in the air. Something plummeted toward them, heard first, a whistle of tortured air, then a dark shape slammed into the roadway before them with an impact that shattered concrete and cracked all the windows in the van.

Burke put the van into reverse, fighting Demalion’s hand on his, but before anything else could happen, a fistful of talons slammed through the remaining shreds of window glass and into Burke’s chest. He shrieked, but only very briefly.

Alekta withdrew her hand, opened the door, and pushed Burke’s body into the center aisle. “I’ll drive.” Her claws closed around the steering wheel, shifted back to human shape, though red to the wrist. Her human shape was considerably the worse for wear. Her leathers were scuffed, torn, and singed; her hair was matted dark with water or blood.

Sylvie’s breath was gone. Bran was curled tight into Demalion’s side, whimpering.

“He worked for her,” Alekta said. “Waiting his chance to turn on you.” She stretched out a hand; Demalion flinched back, but all she did was reach out to tug on Bran’s hair. “Hey, baby. You okay?”

“He’d be better if he weren’t underneath a corpse!” Sylvie snapped.

Alekta turned her eyes from the unseen road, grabbed Burke’s body, and hurled it out the door. It bounced once, jolting the van as it rolled under its rear tires. The van slithered and slewed, but Alekta steered with complete confidence and worrying speed.

Demalion’s jaw was clenched so tight, Sylvie thought he might splinter teeth. With a muttered, “Monster,” he crawled into the back as far away from Alekta as he could get. Sylvie wanted to shake him. Monster or not, Alekta was a welcome ally; a better bodyguard than Sylvie could ever be. It wasn’t for simple strength and power; Sylvie had seen Erinya beaten back twice by humans—Lilith and herself—and pounded by Hera, and there was no hint that Alekta was more powerful than her sister.

No, where Alekta beat Sylvie in the bodyguard stakes was her motive. Sylvie wanted Bran alive, because a living Bran meant Sylvie got her job done, and more, Alex—healed or resurrected, she didn’t care which. Let Val mutter about dark magic all she wanted; Sylvie knew how and when to look the other way when it came to getting results.

Alekta guarded Bran for more reason than duty. The little crooning encouragements she made as she stroked his hair argued genuine concern.

Sylvie, on the other hand, kept listening to the little dark voice murmuring, He’s not worth all this trouble. Sylvie agreed silently. Bran had accused her of blaming him for his kidnapping. She’d denied it then, but there was truth to it. This was his fault. A runaway who brought trouble wherever he went.

Children ran away all the time, and Sylvie had always felt a sneaking sympathy for them, even when she was the one paid to find them and haul them back. They all ran for the same reason at the core—they felt powerless where they were. But a runaway god? Maybe there was a level of contempt in her view of Bran. If he’d been stronger, more able to use the power he held—Catch her ever being that weak-minded, and she didn’t even have any power of her own.

Bran caught Sylvie watching him and reflexively smiled, then traded it for a warier gaze. Alekta growled and slammed the van to a halt.

“Sylvie,” Demalion warned. “We’re here.”

The ISI building loomed ten stories above them, its marble facing traced in witchlight that gleamed like candle flame through the bloody, murky sky.

“You sure this is safe?” Sylvie asked.

Demalion dropped out of the van. “Do we have a choice?”