Sins & Shadows

29 Picking Up the Pieces

HELP BRAN. PROTECT BRAN. SO MUCH EASIER SAID THAN DONE, Sylvie thought, when she was overwhelmed by the idea. So much simpler to fight an enemy than aid an ally who had given up. Lilith wanted to be a god so desperately, and Bran—he had wanted to be human. And Sylvie had taken that away from him.

Sylvie had failed before, pulled defeat from victory. She had no intention of doing so again, not when Demalion had died to make this victory possible.

Across the roof, Lilith scrabbled at the shielding Dunne had ringed them round with, tearing bits free like curls of paper beneath a cat’s claws. Under Dunne’s influence, the curls only rewound and sealed themselves tighter. Lilith wasn’t going to be able to run away.

Lilith doesn’t need to, Sylvie thought. Not if she could absorb more of Bran. The power still flowed toward her, into her, like water running inexorably downhill. Dunne must have been thinking on the same lines; a strange construct swirled into place around Lilith, gleaming like a mirror and acting like a dam. Power still slipped in, under, and over it, but it was a bare trickle compared to what had been heading her way. The rest of it pooled up against the dam and glimmered, a wealth of power and potential just drifting.

“Bran,” Sylvie said. It was a whisper, drowned in the sounds of Lilith cursing Dunne as she chipped at the dam, temporarily letting go her attempt to escape the shield. Made sense, Sylvie thought. If the shield fell, and Lilith escaped, the power would pour after her; with the dam up, though, she couldn’t take the power with her.

Of course, if Sylvie could get Bran back together, Lilith could do nothing, either. Bran’s mind was still around, somewhere—his occasional words reassured her that her task was at least theoretically possible.

A subtle vibration of rage, so low-pitched that Sylvie felt it in her bones before she heard it, came from Dunne, as Lilith continued to fight him. Dunne had taken more than the Furies’ strength for his own, obviously, Sylvie thought as she watched him stalk Lilith with a predator’s calculated patience. Unearned patience. Sylvie wanted to scream at him to hurry.

Do something, the little dark voice warned. If you fail here, Dunne will take us apart. Or Lilith. The only way to win—

“—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.

Pray to him? At that moment, she’d worship him, just for a chance to touch him.

She swallowed hard, closed her eyes, thinking he might very well be as dangerous as balefire to look at. She’d thought his human shell built to bring out mindless want; by the time he finished rebuilding his immortal shell, she might be a pile of ashes, immolated by her own desire.

A gasp reached her, and for a moment she felt relieved. At least it wasn’t just her. Then the pitch of the voice warned her. Dunne lost focus, turning toward Bran as devotedly as any human worshipper, his face blind with joy and want.

Lilith stepped up behind him, skin-close, and Dunne didn’t pay any attention, all his eyes on Eros.

“Hurry, Bran,” Sylvie said. Building the shell was only the first step, after all. It wasn’t enough simply to regain immortality, regain some of his power. He had to get it all back, and at present, Lilith was scooping it up at an enormous rate. Her skin—

Sylvie blinked, and in that single moment, Lilith found the core of Bran’s power, that hopeless desire that fueled men’s dreams and made them try for the impossible. One moment, Lilith was the Lilith Sylvie had come to know and loathe. The next—she flickered, skin warming, going from a too-pale, sharp-boned, witchy woman, to a goddess.

Still knife-edge lean, still competence and will made wiry flesh, but Lilith now appeared as sleek and as elegant as a glass-bladed sword. She demanded respect and admiration, and created in her beholders a helpless urge to touch, even if, like a blade, yielding to that temptation would gain you nothing but bloody fingertips.

Sylvie closed her mind as best she could. Falling into worship of Bran was dangerous, but falling for Lilith was just plain suicidal. She whimpered; her skin buzzed, caught between the two gods of Love. If she could have, she’d have crawled away and hidden. Dunne didn’t look much better. Lilith dropped a hand to his shoulder, and he shuddered, tilted his head back, baring the line of his throat. Her white hand crawled over it, cupped his chin.

“I want you to do something for me, lover,” she said.

Dunne shook his head minutely. The Fury-influenced arm rose, clamped around her forearm, but the claws stayed lax.

“No,” Bran said, but the kind of force Sylvie needed to hear in it was lacking. Lilith had lapped him on the field, taken the main bulk of his power into her. We, Sylvie thought bleakly, are losing.

“I need you to strengthen those lovely shields of yours,” Lilith said to Dunne. “We’ve got visitors I’m not ready to deal with yet. Can you do that for me?”

Clever, Sylvie thought. Dunne couldn’t really object to that, not when he wanted Bran’s power corralled and kept safe. If Lilith had asked something else, he might have tried to fight her pull on his loyalty, but this . . . And having said yes to her once made it so much simpler to say yes again.

“Bran, do something,” Sylvie said, even as Dunne slowly nodded to Lilith. The shielding around the building turned from the cloudy opacity of pebbled glass to the complete darkness of steel. The flashes of white light behind it disappeared, and the world within grew dim and close. Lilith and Bran glowed, and the loose power on the rooftop spiraled between them in a brilliant Mobius strip.

“Thank you,” Lilith said. “Keep it strong for me.”

Madness flashed in Dunne’s eyes for a moment, trapped between her will and his own. “Not for you,” he choked out. “For Bran. For the world.”

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself—”

“Thought you weren’t big on obedience,” Sylvie said. Her body might be down for the moment, but never her mouth. “Thought you wanted independence of thought. Guess you’re not content with being the god of Love. Aiming for god of hypocrisy . . . ?”

“Dunne, get rid of her,” Lilith said, and Sylvie, despite her terror, found herself laughing. That response proved it. Power corrupted, and all of Lilith’s ideals had become empty words. If they had ever been anything more.

“Don’t do it, Kevin,” Bran said.

Dunne’s face had relaxed as soon as Bran spoke, and Lilith, seeing her hold on him slipping, chuffed in an aggravation that Sylvie understood without words. If you want something done, her dark voice whispered, and Sylvie was sure that was exactly what Lilith was thinking.

Self-preservation uncoiled fangs in her belly, chasing away some of the hapless admiration and dread. Bran had Dunne locked in place; he couldn’t attack Sylvie as Lilith had commanded, but Bran didn’t have enough will to override Lilith completely, setting Dunne free. A very fragile stalemate, and Lilith was on her way to cut Sylvie out of the game.

Get up, her voice said. Will you let her win? When you beat her once already? Will you lie still while she kills you? Will you yield?

“Get up, then what?” Sylvie muttered, but the voice was not to be denied, even if it had no answer. She clambered to her feet, stiff, sore, her knees treacherous. She swayed.

“Hey, Grandma,” Sylvie slurred. “Got something to tell you. About genetics. About our blood.”

“I’ll see anything your blood hides soon enough,” Lilith said. “Spread out over the roof.”

Sylvie shrugged. “Probably. Your point?”

“I’m not so sure you’re mine after all,” Lilith said. “If you had any survival sense at all, you’d be trying to crawl away.” She smiled, thrust a casual hand out, and Sylvie’s legs were swiped out from under her.

Sylvie whimpered as she hit the rooftop again, banged her head. Again. She staggered back up to her feet, and said to Lilith’s back, “You’re soft, Grandma. Your enemy’s never fought back.”

Lilith’s spine went rigid. Sylvie laughed, high and strained. “But me . . . My enemies come at me from all directions, and I’m still standing. I’ve won. Every single time. Cedo Nulli. I will not yield. Not to you, not to anyone, not even to my own better instincts.”

Lilith raised a hand, plucked the gleaming spindle from her breast, and aimed it like an arrow at Sylvie.

Light flared, brilliant in the demiglobe of their world, and Sylvie watched it burn toward her. There really wasn’t any point in running. Even the dark voice, rabidly bent on survival, agreed that this was it, praised her for going out on her feet, going out without begging, then fell silent.

The sudden impact of warmth and weight, rolling her across the roof, left her gasping and stunned, even as the spell light shattered off the body shielding hers.

“Bran?” she said. Dunne groaned protest, outrage, and Lilith’s attention turned back to keeping him docile. Dunne’s features twisted, the absorbed Furies showing their touches. Lilith said, “Oh, lover, don’t fight me now—” But her voice was brittle, a little scared. Dunne was contained partially by her, partially by Bran, and mostly for preservation of the world. The Furies wouldn’t care about the world. Sylvie knew it. So did Lilith.

“Help me,” Bran said, a breath in her ear. “I need something of yours.” His arms cradled her head, his body nestled against hers; his skin was velvet heat beneath her clutching hands.

She’d wondered how Bran could stand to be held by a god, to feel that power thrumming against his skin. Now she knew. Being so close to a god, to this god, was . . . pleasant. Definitely pleasurable.

“Anything,” she said, all instinct and desire, then shrugged, a shred of rationality struggling through. “Though I haven’t got anything left.”

His hands stroked her neck, her nape, traveling down her back. “This,” he said. “Give me this.” She shuddered, feeling his touch reach far deeper than just her skin.

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.