Gods & Monsters

13 Remember Me?

THE NEXT MORNING, SYLVIE WOKE WITH A SCALDING HEADACHE, A body that protested, and a strange metallic taste in her mouth. She smacked her lips before opening her eyes and thought about lead poisoning.

A shift of displaced air, the scent of coffee, heavily laced with cream, and a scuff of slippers had her rolling over in time to accept the cup Alex handed her. She cracked an eye, stared blearily up at Alex, and envied Alex the seven-year difference between them. Alex was as short of sleep as Sylvie was, and it only showed because she was quieter than usual. Sylvie knew she’d have bags beneath her eyes like tarnished silver dollars.

Alex moved back to the kitchen, her act of mercy complete, and Sylvie heard the clicking of keys. Regular people got up, went outside, got the newspaper. Alex got up, turned on the computer, and started scanning news files.

A thump-flap of a stressed dog door birthed Guerro, and Sylvie rolled off the couch before the shepherd could investigate the person who’d taken his preferred sleeping spot. She fended his nose off, covered the top of her coffee cup as he shook, setting loose hairs into the world, then sipped her drink once he’d bounded off after Alex.

Sometimes, Sylvie looked at her empty apartment and thought she could get a dog. Something to greet her at the end of a crap day, to be a quiet companion. Then she visited Alex and saw the truth. A dog owned you as surely as a cat did, or a baby, requiring care, and time, and routine that Sylvie didn’t have.

Plus—she fished dog hair out of her mouth—there was the mess.

She set down the coffee cup, staggered into the kitchen, and stole Alex’s bagel, spoke through a mouthful of lox and cream cheese and fresh bread. “So, I’m going to see Cachita—”

“She’s a total liar,” Alex said.

And that answered the question she’d been about to voice. Alex had managed the time to look into Caridad Valdes-Pedraza. Look enough that she was visibly indignant and unhappy.

Sylvie leaned back against the counter space, fed chunks of bagel to Guerro, and said, “Hit me.” It felt like waiting for a blow. She’d rather liked Cachita.

A total liar.

“First off? Elena Valdes? Not her cousin. Not by genetics, not even by proximity. I looked both of them up. Cachita’s not a local girl. She just moved here, grew up in Louisiana, stayed there for college. Elena Valdes? Her parents emigrated here, left all their family in Havana, and Elena never left Miami. No way they intersected.”

Sylvie snorted. “But it made it easy for her. Get my sympathy. Explain her interest in the Everglades women as personal not ghoulish. So, a reporter who lies. I’m surprised that I’m surprised.”

“Not a reporter,” Alex said. “Or at least she never took a single journalism class in her entire college career.”

Sylvie blinked. “Okay. Wait. Now I am surprised.”

“Told you. Total liar.” Alex bit her lip, tried not to look smug, but I told you so was seeping out all over.

“So who is she?” Sylvie said.

Alex’s smug deflated. “I don’t know. I mean, I know who she is, where she was born. But she got out of school—anthropology, by the way—two years ago and hasn’t had a job since. Not even the usual postgrad jobs like waitressing, bartending, call centers, et cetera.”

That might explain the near-empty house. Cachita was squatting more than living in it. Living hand to mouth and still going after Azpiazu?

“I could ask her,” Sylvie said. “Go straight to the source.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Just be careful. I don’t know what her game is.”

“Here’s hoping she’s on the side of the angels.” Sylvie put down the rest of the bagel, wiped her hands on a Hello-Kitty dish towel, and said, “At least her information on Azpiazu was true.” She paused, thought about it. “What about Azpiazu himself motivating her? If she’s not a reporter, and she’s not related to any of the victims, then it’s got to be about Azpiazu.”

Alex said, “Why don’t you go ask her?” Crankier than usual, but Sylvie had rousted her out of bed late to crash on her couch, stolen some spare clothing, and now stolen her breakfast.

AS HOT AS SHE WAS TO FIND CACHITA, SHAKE SOME ANSWERS FROM the woman, Sylvie had to make a stop first. She was out of ammo. Not that it had done any good with Azpiazu, but it was the principle of the thing. An empty gun was a broken tool.

The office safe yielded the bullets she wanted. She sat at her desk, slotting the clip in, listening to her little dark voice purring in contentment, when the sound of glass cracking reached her.

The downstairs window?

Not loud enough.

The front door.

Which meant it wasn’t a car-spun rock making an unlucky impact.

Sylvie looked at her upper windows and thought, not for the first time, that she really needed a back exit.

Instead, she eased herself onto the narrow landing, keeping to the shadows, peered downstairs. Movement, a long, supple shape slipping out of her visual range, leaving a drifting voice behind. “Don’t be like that, Shadows. Come on down! Patrice wants to talk to you.”

The goth boy-witch, Aron.

Sylvie felt a peculiar triumph twisting her mouth. Patrice had actually done her a favor. Broken doorway, trespassing, and threatening her—Sylvie could shoot and claim self-defense.

She slipped down the stairs, bracing herself against the rail, hunching low, gun in hand. Aron launched himself at her, a surprisingly physical attack for a witch, and they tumbled over each other, Sylvie kicking away, firing blind.

The window spider-cracked, her bullet dimpling the center of it. Aron laughed in her face, said, “Are we having fun yet?” and leaped away. “Patrice is waiting.”

He darted through the broken door, and Sylvie wiped the blood from her split lip, hesitating only briefly before bolting after him.

Foolish, her little dark voice hissed. Aron wasn’t a normal witch, all talk and sneakiness. Aron, Sylvie thought, was crazy.

Ahead of her, Aron paused to wave—encouragement, a taunt, god only knew—and detoured from the main drag toward the oceanfront. Sylvie moved steadily after him, dodging joggers, vendors setting up, tourists looking shocked awake, and her mind noted that this wasn’t right. A man running down the street, chased by a woman with a gun? No one was noticing them at all.

Witch, she reminded herself. Their invisibility some type of elaborate spell, triggered when they touched.

Witch? her dark voice echoed. It didn’t sound certain. She slowed her steps. They’d tangled in the nightclub, and she’d felt the burn of magic against her skin, strong and sharp, an electrical current dancing through her bones.

His laughter drifted back, edgy and close to manic, deep-toned like the roar of the surf.

Seeking a confrontation.

Trap, her little voice said.

No duh, she thought. She slowed her chase, trying to figure this out. It felt . . . strange. Her brain said trap. Her instincts said it wasn’t that clear-cut.

They’d tumbled against each other in her office, and that magical burn still lingered, sensitizing her nerves. Either every piece of tacky goth jewelry he wore was laced with spells, or there was something more here.

A gaggle of tourists wandered down the shady path toward the sea, putting themselves between Sylvie and her target, unaware of either of them. Aron, a black streak against the sun-dazzled sea, beckoned Sylvie on.

Sylvie let her gun hand slacken, slowed her pace to a bare crawl, giving the tourists the chance to get out of the way. But instead of moving on, the tourists, two men, two women, an assortment of bickering teens, swayed in her wake like driftwood on the tide and ended up following her toward Aron.

“Why don’t you stretch yourself?” she said. “Use some of that spellwork to clear us some space.” She needed to get the tourists gone.

He grinned back, a slow smile. “Nah. I like ’em. Keeps you on your best behavior.”

Kept her gun useless. With this much magic in the air, Sylvie was loath to just start shooting. She’d have to have the barrel snugged up against Aron before she fired it, and she doubted he’d allow it.

“So Patrice let you off your leash? I thought you were only her bodyguard. Not her attack dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog,” he said, his grin fading.

That hot temper, that fierce rebuttal, they dredged something like memory out of her, woke a vague sense of déjà vu. “Patrice sent you after me. You do as you’re told.”

He shook his head. “Only sometimes. Only when it’s right.”

“Enough talk, Aron,” Patrice said. She stepped out of tree shadow, petulant and puffy-eyed. A week in Bella’s body, and she was using it harder than Bella ever had. It looked like she’d aged five years. A corrupt spirit corrupting what it had claimed.

“Patrice,” Sylvie said. “Looking tired. Life not as easy as you thought?”

“Aron, kill her already,” Patrice said.

Aron’s feverish gaze ran across Sylvie’s skin, shoulders to toes and back up again. “You sure?”

Sylvie, clenched in readiness to fight back, to flee a spell or another attack, to crack the morning open with bullet fire, felt her body jerk in shock.

Patrice twitched also, a bizarre body echo. “Of course I’m sure! I paid you to—”

Aron’s chest shifted, moving fast with his quickening breath. “I know. I just thought. Sometimes, there are things you want to do yourself. For the satisfaction of it. No matter who you’ve hired.”

Patrice’s expression was pure distaste and Sylvie found herself laughing, hard-edged and furious. “You killed for that body, and now you won’t even fight to defend it? Afraid of scratching the finish? Or are you afraid you don’t have what it takes?”

Her voice was shrieking warning; this was not how any confrontation with a bad-magic witch was supposed to go.

“Kill her now, Aron.”

Aron hesitated, his eyes bright on Sylvie’s, amused still. “What do you think, Shadows? You think you can get to her before I get to you?” There was a hunger in his voice, a fierce vibration that suggested this was what he’d wanted all along: some type of cage match that he could enjoy.

“I can try,” Sylvie said, moving even as she spoke, heading straight for Patrice. Hesitation was fatal, no matter the situation. She aimed—sighting at Patrice’s startled face—pulled the trigger. The sound was loud, louder than their voices had been. It cracked the illusion around them. The tourists scattered like a flock of wild birds, still blind to the players, but not to the danger. One of them cried out, clapped a hand over her calf.

Bullet wound.

Patrice simpered at Sylvie, but her eyes showed the whites all around. Her hand clutched nervously at one of her oversized earrings.

Protection charm.

Deflection.

Sylvie had just shot the tourist.

Fuck.

But Patrice had betrayed herself with that one gesture—showing Sylvie where her protection lay. Sylvie tackled Patrice, slapped her hand over the earring, and yanked at it.

It didn’t come off; the flesh around it didn’t yield. Invulnerability, then.

Aron began to whisper, his husky voice drawing tighter, lighter, and strangely familiar. A chant. A spell. Something. It lacked the focused energy she had come to expect from magical workings, but it diverted the attention Sylvie’s shot had drawn.

Patrice squalled like a skinned cat, shrieking Aron’s name. He broke off the chant and threw himself into the battle.

He wasn’t a witch, Sylvie realized abruptly, taking the brunt of his weight across her shoulders as she twisted away. She elbowed him sharply in the nose, and he jerked back.

Holding back, she thought. Playing with her? Or . . .

He wasn’t an enemy.

Or was he?

There was real rage in his eyes. It didn’t seem directed at her, though. Didn’t seem directed at all, just free-floating fury.

She slipped free from his grasp, his hands like steel but failing to close tightly enough on her bones. Patrice scrambled toward the sidewalk, through the grass; lizards and a quick black scuttling scorpion fled her.

Sylvie slammed into the girl, using her longer reach, her heavier weight, knelt on the woman’s back. Patrice screeched and clawed, tore gouges in Sylvie’s wrists, but Sylvie undid the clasp on the earring and yanked it away.

Patrice screamed loud and long, shrill enough to make Sylvie recoil. The woman staggered upright and ran. Aron caught her in three swift strides.

“I paid you!” she shrieked.

“Someone else hired me first,” he said. His hands closed over her neck and face; he drew her close as if to kiss her, then wrenched.

A wet, gristly sound and Patrice’s body dropped, knees folding, torso slapping wetly into the grass. Her head, eyes still fluttering, fell a moment later. Aron licked blood off of his fingers and turned back toward Sylvie.

Definitely not a witch, not even a sorcerer, Sylvie thought. Her heart raced; her gun was tight in her hands.

“Gonna shoot me? Again?”

A Power in the city as well as a god. A Power that was looking at Sylvie expectantly. Eagerly. Hungry down to the core. She thought she recognized it. Impossible as it seemed.

“No praise?” he said. “I did it for you.”

She licked dry lips, studied the gothy clothing, the simmering hunger, and took refuge in words. “Seems to me, I did more than my fair share. I got the charm off.”

“I could have done it,” he said. “But I thought you’d want to participate. You like your vengeance, Sylvie.”

“I’m not the one yanking heads off in a public park. With children present.”

“Children should know that monsters can be killed,” Aron said. “Patrice killed two children for her selfish purposes, an infant and that girl whose body she wore. But if it makes you happy, I’ll keep her invisible until you clean her up.”

“Me?”

“I cleaned up after you in Chicago.”

If Sylvie had any lingering doubts about who Aron was, they were fading fast. Especially when he slumped, crossed his arms across his narrow chest, and sulked, spiky black hair loosening and settling like storm clouds over his brow. “You don’t even recognize me, do you.”

“I do,” Sylvie said.

“Yeah?”

“Erinya,” Sylvie named her. The youngest of the Fury trio that worked for Dunne. She was rewarded with a quick smile that bared those vampiric veneers again. Wait. Not veneers after all, not if this was the Fury.

“Took you long enough. I thought you’d know me at the club. I even rubbed up against you, and you couldn’t tell? I came when you called, and you weren’t there. You didn’t even leave me instructions! I had to figure out what you summoned me for all on my own.”

“Cut me some slack,” Sylvie said. “I thought Dunne destroyed you. I saw him devour you when he needed your strength.”

“He absorbed us,” Aron said. “And when he didn’t need us any longer, he spat us back out. Refined us, he said. I hunt specific types of murderers now.”

“Child-killers,” Sylvie said. Of course. It explained the other murders in the city. All people who’d killed children.

Erinya grinned. “It’s a fertile field to play in. Alekta couldn’t wrap her mind around change, so she’s still dealing with matricides, patricides, families gone bad. And Magdala got stuck with crimes committed against society. Bo-ring, just like her.”

“Reshaped you, too,” Sylvie said. “Guess he always wanted a boy?”

“What? This? No,” Aron-Erinya said. “I thought Patrice would like it, and I wanted to get close to her, wanted to draw out the hunt. What about you?”

“Me?”

“Do you like this shape?”

Sylvie opened her mouth to say something in response to Erinya’s violent and unsubtle flirtations and failed. She forgave herself; there was a lot to process—that through a scratchy symbol drawn on a doorstep based on instructions Sylvie’d given herself in a dream, she’d called Erinya down to Miami. That there was anything to call . . . the Furies not gone.

A brief spurt of terror touched her. Demalion. If the Furies were alive and hunting, Demalion’s safety was precarious.

“Refined, my ass,” Sylvie muttered finally. “It’s your body, your choice. My preference is irrelevant.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Aron said. He shook all over like a wet dog, flipped gender. Took on the more familiar form, the punk gothette. It really wasn’t that much of a change. Aron had been long and lean, androgynous. So was Erinya. “So. The body?”

Sylvie’s head ached. She looked down at the blood-spattered grass. Bella Alvarez hadn’t been a big girl. It wouldn’t be much effort to cart her body away. Or they could just leave her. An unsolved murder, committed impossibly in broad daylight.

Even if the murder hadn’t happened practically in her backyard, Bella/Patrice could be linked to Sylvie easily enough through Lio. And Lio thought poorly enough of her at the moment that he might do something rash, something like talking to the ISI. If Bella disappeared, Lio’d be unhappy but unable to get the justice system rolling.

Sylvie said, “You get the body. I’ll get the head.”

Erinya shifted foot to foot. “But I did all the work.”

“I’m the one who summoned you to do it,” Sylvie said. “Cleanup’s part of the job.”

“Fine,” Erinya said. She bent, scooped up the body; blood dribbled down her shoulder. “Where’s your truck?”

Sylvie said, “Give me your jacket.”

“Again?” Erinya dropped the body, shrugged off the jacket. “You’re hard on my clothes, Sylvie. It’s a good thing I like you.”

“It’s a good thing you like bloodstains,” Sylvie said. She spread the jacket on the ground, toed Patrice’s head into the center, and made a neat bundle of it. “Can’t you just magic her away?”

“Not and keep us invisible,” Erinya said. “I’m not really good at the magic part. I’m good at the killing-things part.”

“Yeah, I get you,” Sylvie said. Her mouth stung; she realized she was smiling, straining her split lip. Smiling over a dead body. She stopped.

Erinya sighed. “I’m going to ask Dunne to make you a Fury when you die. You and I can hunt forever. I know he worries about what he should do with you.”

“Nothing,” Sylvie said, “I’m not his.”

“You fight for justice,” Erinya said. “You could be his, no matter your lineage. When it came to it, when you asked for help, for vengeance . . . you drew the scales of justice on Patrice’s doorstep.”

“Tell you what,” Sylvie said. “We move the body now. And God and Dunne can fight over my soul when I’m dead.”

“But that could be such a very long time,” Erinya said.

“Not the way my life is going,” Sylvie said.

“Yeah,” Erinya agreed. “You should be more careful. Tepeyollotl’s skulking around, and he’s a real bastard god. If he hates you, you get your heart ripped out. If he loves you, you get your heart ripped out. Oh! You should take Patrice’s invulnerability charm. It’s not as good as Lilith’s was. It’s only a temporary one, but it’ll help you.”

“No,” Sylvie said. “Those things have hidden costs. I wear it, and someone else suffers, right? Like the tourist who got clipped by a bullet meant for Patrice?”

“Could have been a bad ricochet,” Erinya said. “Guns are no fun. Always best to fight teeth to teeth.”

“That’s not an answer,” Sylvie said.

“Always so suspicious,” Erinya pouted.

“Am I right?”

“Fine. Yes. The talisman would bounce your injuries, your death, to someone else.”

“No,” Sylvie said.

“But you’re more fun than other people,” Erinya said. “You’re sneaky and you’re dangerous and you brought me good sport. A ghost that changed bodies to escape death. I didn’t know humans could do that.”

Sylvie’s breath stuttered in her chest; she stumbled. Patrice’s head squelched nastily inside the jacket. Erinya paused, predatory instincts firing. “Sylvie?” It was a growl.

“Tripped,” Sylvie said.

Erinya’s dark-eyed gaze narrowed; her eyes burned out, leaving black pits in her head. Her hair shifted and spiked toward feathers, losing control of the quasi-human form and taking on the pure aspect of Fury. Sylvie jerked her eyes away, focused them on the safer sight of the lumpy jacket in her arms, growing steadily damper and darker. Looking a Fury in the eyes led to nightmares at best, madness at worst.

Her day was too full for either option.

“You smell like . . . secrets,” Erinya said, keeping pace with her. Her feet on the pavement were clawed; leathery boots shifted into sinewy legs and strong paws.

“It’s my job,” Sylvie said. “Lots of secrets.”

Warmth along the side of her face, and the pinprick of needle teeth closing gently, warningly, along her nape. Sylvie stopped. Her heart rocketed. Erinya would be tasting fear, along with sweat and adrenaline and secrecy.

Sylvie dropped Patrice’s head, punched Erinya in the muzzle as hard as she could. Her knuckles split; the skin of her neck stung as Erinya’s teeth were jarred free.

“Get off me,” Sylvie said. She drew her gun, turned to face the monster. “Look, Eri, I’m probably happier than I should be that you’re not gone, not dead. That doesn’t mean I won’t do my best to make you that way if needed.”

“Something . . . important,” Erinya said. She turned her head this way and that, that strange nightmare creature, half dog, half bird, all hunger. Her forked tongue tasted the air, cleaned the thin smear of Sylvie’s blood from her curving teeth. “I’ll find out.”

“You know what?” Sylvie said. “Leave the body. I’ll take care of it. You, go back to Dunne.”

Erinya laughed, shifting back toward her human guise. Her smile had no warmth in it. “You’re not the boss of me, Sylvie.”

“I summoned you; doesn’t that count?”

“That’s the trouble with calling in mercenaries,” Erinya said. “They’re hard to control. They like to be paid. Give me something, and I’ll leave your secrets alone.”

“And here I thought you were on a god-given mission,” Sylvie said. She picked up Patrice’s head again, grimacing at the splotch it had left on the pavement, and headed for the truck. She focused her thoughts on practical matters, tried to soothe the worry from her mind and body. Erinya’s senses were sharper than any animal’s, and she coupled that with rudimentary mind reading. Sylvie thought hard about whether she’d left the tarp in the truck lockbox, whether the olive fabric would be enough to hide stains, whether the tide was right to drop a body, and when all of those didn’t ease the suspicion on Erinya’s face, she went for the sure shot. She thought of Patrice, dead. Sylvie’s own guilty satisfaction that Patrice wasn’t going to prosper. That her enemy was destroyed.

A sated smile curved Erinya’s lips; her lashes came down, changing anger to pleasure. “I did good.”

“Yeah, you did,” Sylvie said. She gave the praise without hesitation. For one thing, a happy Erinya was an Erinya less likely to pry. For another . . . Well, it had been a job neatly done.

Sylvie had hoped for a more subtle way to kill Patrice. She’d hoped for something that could pass for a medical condition. As far as the world was concerned, Bella Alvarez had already had one serious medical episode. But, once Patrice had started throwing witches Sylvie’s way, it could only end violently.

Erinya slung the body into the back of the truck without even a shrug of effort, wrapped it with the tarp, and climbed into the cab humming tunelessly. Sylvie shivered. It was a human thing to do, and it sounded nothing like human at all. She put the truck into gear and headed out.

Erinya stayed with her long enough to see Patrice’s body slip beneath the deep waters, weighted down with broken concrete and rebar, before vanishing. Sylvie hoped the Fury had gone back to Dunne, to Olympus, to anyplace other than Miami. She didn’t even let a wisp of Chicago cross her mind. Erinya’s disappearance was a bullet dodged. Made Sylvie crazy, though. If she hadn’t been carrying that dangerous secret, she might have been able to recruit Erinya to fight against Azpiazu.

Sylvie ran the truck through a car wash, rinsing off any blood that might have seeped into the back, and called it done.