Sins & Shadows

30 Afterglow

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.”

“No,” Dunne said.

“Why not?” Sylvie said. It wasn’t that she’d really thought they’d thank her—gloating over an enemy’s death didn’t seem the way to keep peace between pantheons—but she hadn’t expected the lecture. “Is this some type of holier-than-thou-god-thing, ’cause I have to tell you, humans are perfectly capable of correcting injustice on their own. Demalion did.” She ran out of steam and dropped to crouch on the roof, saving her legs the strain of standing. Leaning against the roof lip gave her a distorted view of Dunne above her. He seemed enormous, a looming thunderhead.

She closed her eyes, rubbed the soreness out of them. “You thought it was just,” she said, and knew she sounded petulant instead of persuasive. “You were going to do it.”

“You enjoyed it,” Dunne accused. “That makes you a murderer—”

“Am I smiling?” Sylvie said. “Am I dancing in triumph, asking for high fives all around? It had to be done. I had to do it—”

“And it satisfied you. Fed some hunger in your soul. To see her crushed for manipulating you. Vengeance for your lover. Your cry of justice is only your latest excuse. You will always have an excuse, Shadows, to give you a reason to pull the trigger, to vent your rage. In the end, that’s all they are. Excuses.”

Sylvie licked dry lips, let the shock of his words stop rattling her bones. “It’s—irrelevant. An executioner doesn’t have to hate her job.” A wash of sickness touched her. Was she really thinking of herself as a killer?

She shook her head, shaking the thoughts out like dust from a rug. “It doesn’t matter. The end result is the same. I did two things you couldn’t do, only one of which I’m getting paid for. I saved Bran, and I punished his abductor. You owe me.”

Bran whispered something in Dunne’s ear, rising on his toes to do so. Sylvie held her breath.

“We don’t owe you anything. The debt is cleared.”

“Bullshit,” Sylvie cried. She ached. Dry lips, dry tongue, sere heart, charred soul. “Demalion’s still dead. Bring him back!”

“If Lilith deserved death for laying hands on Bran, for kidnapping him, do you think your Demalion deserved less for first stalking, then killing him? He killed a god,” Dunne said. “That cannot be forgiven.” He stroked the smooth expanse of Bran’s back, each finger width a gloat that he had what she had lost.

“You’re punishing him for my command, my decision. How is that fair?” She had to win this one; she couldn’t bear it if she failed.

“It’s in our bargain, don’t you think? Intrinsic. The converse. If I earned a death for my enemies for saving Bran’s life, then I earned a life for my ally for killing your enemy.”

“No,” Dunne said again. Flat, sure, uninterested. How could she argue with a man who refused to be drawn into debate. With a god who might squash her if she pressed too hard. But Demalion’s life—

“Punish me instead,” she meant to say, but the words stuck in her throat as every instinct in her rebelled at that. She was a survivor.

Dunne was turning away already, his judgment rendered, his interest shifted to the man—the god—fitting himself into his arms.

Bran nuzzled into Dunne’s neck, then looked back at Sylvie with eyes like clouded honey. “Your debt’s been cleared. Don’t push it further. You won’t like it.” He smiled at her, smug. Sylvie bit her lip as she recognized the expression as one she’d seen herself wear in the mirror.

He was making her pay for the hell she had put him through. No sweet gratitude—he’d tasted too much of her soul to allow that.

Even in her despair, she found some tiny vindictive satisfaction in that. The Greek gods, including Dunne, who’d dragged her into this, were getting a subtly changed god of Love back.

Bran bit Dunne’s neck, a tiny lick after, slid arms around his waist. Dunne frowned; he tipped Bran’s head up so as to look at his face, his eyes, then sighed and kissed him, slowly and deeply. Bran leaned into him.

Sylvie bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Punishment, she thought, god of Love style, showing her what she had lost with Demalion’s death.

Bran made a sudden gasp that sounded more like pain than pleasure, and a snake slithered out from between his fingers, coming out from under his skin. At his neck, the vibrant colors faded from the serpent markings, fading to a greyed shadow against his skin.

Their kiss broke, and Bran said, “This is yours. I don’t need so much of it.” He thrust his hand toward her. The snake riding it, all jeweled elegance and hidden fangs, hissed.

“I don’t want it,” Sylvie said. Tears were hot in her eyes. “I don’t want it.”

“Take it back,” Dunne said. Sylvie scrabbled backward, to the limits of movement; the lip of the roof pressed into her back. Bran opened his hand, and the snake dropped into her lap, thrashing, hissing, biting. . . .

When the pain cleared, the sun was rising, and she was alone on the rooftop. Alone with the wreckage. Again. And hadn’t she surpassed herself this time. In the merciless light of the sun, all she saw were moments that encapsulated pain or failure. There, a broken pile of rubble that had been a man, whose name she had never learned, whose only fault was being in the wrong place. There, the place where Lilith had lurked, seen but unrecognized until too late.

The roof was rent before her in the spot where Demalion had died; with a little effort, she could dangle her feet into the room below. The asphalt sheets dripped downward, collected water with a roseate hue. A brief shine of glass caught her eye, and she crawled toward it, found herself the possessor of a sharp curve of what had been a crystal ball. It gleamed faintly in the sunlight. She cupped it in her hands, shielded it from the sun, and peered again. It shone pearly grey in her fingers, like a tiny scrap of soul. She clenched her fist about it. Demalion.

She put her face in her hands and heard sirens in the distance like a mourning wail. The sound gave her the impetus to rise. She didn’t want to be found here. Not with this mess. Not when the morning crew of the ISI arrived to see who’d knocked their sand castle down in the night. Somehow, she thought pointing a finger toward the heavens and saying, “gods’ will,” wasn’t going to cut it.

She stiff-legged her way to the door, body aching in every joint, and into the stairwell. Alekta’s body was gone, but Helen’s charred body waited, a fetal curl of blackened agony in singed designer clubwear.

Sylvie stepped over the corpse, wincing as her back protested, got halfway down to the first landing, then slowly, stiffly made her way up again as a thought occurred to her. All well and good to think, Get out of here, but it wasn’t as easy as that.

She knelt beside Helen, fumbled through ruined fabric, grimacing, and found a key ring. Flipping through the keys yielded one that belonged to a car.

In the parking garage nearby, Sylvie found herself wandering row after row of shiny black sedans and matching SUVs. And in the third one, a red Beetle. She tried the key in the lock, and muttered, “We’ve got a winner.”

She climbed in, cursed the stick shift when working the clutch hurt, and put off driving away for a quick sortie. Glove box: wallet, gas card, credit cards, cash, $150.

Sylvie took advantage of the early hour and the nearest gas station to fill up the Beetle, using Helen’s card. The gas-station attendant, boarding up blown-out glass windows with a shell-shocked expression, never so much as looked at her. Judging his exhaustion level and his state of shock as “wouldn’t recognize his mother at the moment,” she also bought and filled three gas cans’ worth of gas. Homeland Security was all well and good, but not when they were relying on traumatized wage slaves to make the reports. ’Sides, it was Helen’s card. HomeSec could investigate Helen all they wanted.

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.

Her brain was locked on autopilot, locked in cold anger at herself. Hadn’t she vowed to change? She hadn’t. Hadn’t she promised not to put others in danger? She had.

Finally, she sat outside Baptist Hospital in South Miami, trying to gather one last burst of courage. Once more into the fire. One last chance to have her numbed heart pushed back into grief and pain.

Or she could just leave and never know. Leave it all. Alex’s fate, the job, Miami. Start somewhere new.

She got out of the car instead. Nothing on that list was worth running from. And she couldn’t run from herself. If she wanted a change, she’d have to make it herself. Starting now. Kinder, gentler Sylvie coming right up. If she stayed out of the Magicus Mundi, surely she could do it.

Sylvie strode into the hospital, hit the desk, and said, “My friend was checked in—” How long ago? One day? Two? Three? Sylvie shook her mind into order and said. “Wednesday. Alexandra Figueroa-Smith.”

The receptionist typed for a second, then looked up, face still, and Sylvie braced herself. “ICU.”

Alive. Sylvie nearly gasped with the relief. “ICU? Did I say friend? I meant sister. Which room was it?”

“Family only,” the man said. Bored with the routine.

“She hasn’t got family, not decent family anyway,” Sylvie said. “Except for me. Look it up, bet there haven’t been people beating down her door to visit.”

“We can’t give out that kind of—”

“Look, I’ve driven nonstop for twenty-four hours, I’ve been through hell, and seeing Alex is the only thing keeping me on my feet. Trust me, you don’t want to get on my bad side.”

“Or what?” he said. He flipped papers without ever looking up.

She reached across the desk, laid her hand over his. Smaller than his, but smeared with scratches from glass, bruising from hits she couldn’t even recall, nails torn, blood pooled beneath the quicks. His gaze fixated on it. Sylvie said, “I’ve been through hell. And I’ll share it with you.”

So much for kinder and gentler, she thought. But who was she to argue with success?

He gave her the room number, and she smiled, though she was sure it looked more like a rictus than a thank-you.

She headed down the hall at a fast clip, in case he decided to call security after a second or third thought. Her speed faltered at the closed door. She’d seen snakebite victims before. Ugly business. Bruising, swelling, necrotic tissue, comas, machinery, and death.

She pushed open the door and blinked. Alex looked—asleep. Despite ICU and the machinery humming nearby, supposedly monitoring her vital functions, there were no tubes in her, no sensors, no needles. Sylvie blinked in cautious hope. A deep fragrance reached her as she closed the door behind her and sealed out the scent of bleach. Orchids.

Orchids massed in the ICU room, propped everywhere, potted and fragrant, impossibly out of place. But she supposed if anyone could leave flowers in an ICU, it would be a god paying his fee. Sylvie collapsed in the chair beside the bed, a half-choked cry leaving her lips. The whole room smelled like Fairchild Gardens, like the outdoors. Like life.

The debt’s been cleared, Bran said. Not such a bastard after all, she thought, shaking again.

Alex’s hand clenched, unclenched in the blanket; her eyes squeezed tighter shut, as if she was enjoying her sleep.

Sylvie licked her lips, said, “Hey, wakey-wakeys.”

Alex’s eyes fluttered open, turning first toward the sunlight, as if she’d never expected to see it again, then back toward Sylvie. She blinked at the orchids for a long moment, the riot of white-speckled pink, of violet and cream, of attenuated yellow. “They’re not lilies,” she whispered. “I guess I’m not dying. Am I going to prom?”

Sylvie laughed for the first time since Demalion had died. It was ragged and started up about as well as a cold engine on a winter’s day. She folded her hand around Alex’s cold fingers. “Do you feel like dancing?”

“I’m alive,” Alex said. “You’re alive. Yeah, I could dance.”

“Club night, then, soon as you’re out,” Sylvie said. Her voice was roughened. She scrubbed at her eyes. “How you feeling?”

“Confused mostly,” Alex said. She struggled to sit up, wiped bleariness from her eyes. “A cop came and talked to me. With a florist? He said I’d get better. Except it was all in my head. The florist kissed me.” A tiny blush swam up through her pallor. “He was really hot.”

“Well, it was Eros,” Sylvie said. “I think hot goes with the position.” The tears kept threatening, and she couldn’t understand it. She pinched the bridge of her nose punishingly hard. Her nails dug into the skin.

“A god brought me flowers?”

“Two gods. I guess he didn’t trust me with them,” Sylvie said. Each of the orchids was potted, and didn’t that boggle her brain—the idea of Dunne gardening. Even Bran—“I was going to mulch them.”

“What? Why? They’re beautiful,” Alex said. “Beautiful.” She rolled her head to look at them again. Pale spattered pink, violet, gold-tinged, elegant, radiating color in the sterile room, warming in sunlight.

“They’re the satanists,” Sylvie said. She hadn’t meant to tell Alex, but she was tired of hiding things. If she was going to change, she would need help.

“What?”

Sylvie closed her eyes, leaned her head against the mattress. “It was my fee. For helping Dunne, he’d kill the satanists for me. . . . But he couldn’t do it. He’s not a killer.” The last was a bare whisper.

Alex reached out an unsteady hand, and Sylvie handed her one of the plants, setting it carefully beside her. Alex stroked a petal. “This—was a person? One of the ones who killed Suarez?”

“That one’s the red-haired bitch,” Sylvie said. “The first one he transformed. He couldn’t kill them.”

Alex said nothing, still stroking the petals, giving them all her attention, and Sylvie stumbled on, well aware that Alex, for all her supposed abstraction, was listening very closely indeed.

“You were right,” Sylvie said. “I’ve killed people, though I called them monsters. I’ve killed lots of things. And a lot of people die around me and because of me, and for—” Her voice gave out for a moment. “God, Alex. Demalion’s dead. I let him in, and he died. I can’t let that happen to you. That’s why I never told. To keep you safe—”

“No,” Alex said. “You were doing well there, Syl. Finish up right. You never told me, never let me know, hid what you had to do, because . . .”

Sylvie swallowed, pressed her face to the white sheets, breathed in faint hints of bleach and orchid fragrance. Alex leaned back and waited.

“I didn’t want you to see I was a monster, too,” Sylvie said.

Alex sighed. “We’re going to talk, Sylvie. Before we open the shop again. Preferably with alcohol in hand.” The sleepy daze had left her eyes, and she was getting that all-too-familiar martial look, the one that organized Sylvie’s life for her.

“The shop?” Sylvie said. “I can’t—”

“People need you,” Alex said. “Did you think about that when you decided to close up shop?”

“People should take care of their own damn problems,” Sylvie muttered.

“But so many of them can’t, Syl. Not everyone can see what has to be done or have the strength to do it. You do both.”

“I—” Sylvie shivered.

Alex turned her hand over, stroked her wrist, frowning. “You’re all beat-up. More ’n usual. What have you been doing?”

“Surviving,” Sylvie said. “At the expense of others. As usual.” Alex’s stroking stopped, but she made no other sign that she’d noticed Sylvie’s words. “I’m sorry, Alex. The snakes were my fault. They came after me, too. I sent them away . . . set them on you. I didn’t mean to.” Another pitiful apology, better suited to a child.

“I know,” Alex said. There was sufficient weight to her words that Sylvie looked up from their linked hands. Alex’s eyes were tired, burdened. “The cop—that was your Justice, right?—he talked in my head while he brought the orchids. Told me what you’ve done. What you’ve kept from me. Told me about Lilith. About Demalion.”

“And you still think I can help people? That Shadows Inquiries should stay open? I’ve killed people, Alex.”

“It’s another reason you can’t close the shop.”

“It’s the best reason to close it,” Sylvie countered.

Alex shifted in the narrow bed, pushing herself upward, trying to sit upright again. “And do what, instead?” Alex said. “You help people, Sylvie. That darkness in you gets focused on achieving results on the good side of the ledger. Without the job, how long do you think it would last before you snapped? Before you got into something else. Something blacker.”

Sylvie shuddered, put her face down in her hands. “God, Alex. Don’t let me fall.”

“I won’t,” Alex said. She petted Sylvie’s tangled hair. “You might be good at taking on the world. But I am good at taking care of you. If you let me. No more shutting me out.”

“I’ll try,” Sylvie said.

“Good girl,” Alex said.

Sylvie snapped, “I’m still the boss. And you’re still the employee. Don’t get cocky.”

Alex bit her lip and laughed at her before her eyes grew thoughtful again. She touched the orchids nearby. “What are you going to do with them now?”

Kill them. Grind them to pulp. Why should they have any kind of life when they’d killed her friend?

New leaf, she argued with herself. They were no longer dangerous. They’d paid. They were plants, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like they could come back.

Best to be sure. They killed your friend. Tried to kill Alex.

I killed my lover, she countered, and silenced the growl in the back of her mind.

“I—”

“At a loss for words, Syl? That’s not like you.”

“Too many words,” Sylvie said. “You decide.” Her heart thumped. “You tell me what to do with those killers.”

Alex dabbled her fingers into the soil a little, touched the pale petals again, traced the slender stem; fragile, it shivered beneath her touch. She let her hand drop, reached it out to Sylvie.

“We’ll keep them alive. They’re beautiful, Syl. Whatever they were before, whatever sins they committed—they’re beautiful now.”