Sins & Shadows

He leaned forward. “Before I came, I hadn’t realized you’d killed quite so many people.”

“I’m no murderer,” Sylvie said. “I don’t kill people.” Monsters, on the other hand, yeah, she’d killed those in quantity.

“They think otherwise, and they get a little . . . overzealous in their desire to help justice.”

“Good to love your job,” Sylvie said. Empty words to go with her empty mind.

He sighed. “I am a god, Sylvie, whether you choose to believe me or not. But I was once a policeman, so let me save you some time. Death is no mystery to my kind. I ask you to find my lover, and I do this knowing, without any doubt at all, that he’s alive. Equally, I know that he’s being held somewhere I can’t reach or find. And he can’t get free—” His voice cracked, the calmness deserting him.

He, Sylvie thought, now that’s a surprise. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. But I’ve quit.”

“Can you?” he asked. “Some things are in the blood. You can’t be other than you are.”

She started to rise, and he took her wrist. She yanked it away. “Call the cops if you think your boyfriend’s been kidnapped.”

“I already have,” Du

Sylvie remembered the cops earlier and hesitated. It couldn’t be related. Even a sorcerer couldn’t influence people that greatly. Charm, Deceive, Destroy. The three major spell groups; the first coaxed people into action they wouldn’t otherwise take, the second shrouded a person’s mind, and the third ruined a man or woman, body or soul. Perhaps a big enough charm—

“Just hear me out,” he said. He reached into the space between them and opened his palms. A photograph lay on them.

Sylvie, reluctantly, took it. It wasn’t a great photo. The subject had been moving at the time, slipping to the outside of the shot, as if he didn’t like the camera eye’s weight on his skin, but it revealed a good-looking man with red hair, a lithe build, and an expression on his face that struck a worried chord in her.

“His name is Brandon Wolf,” Du

Robbing the cradle a bit, Sylvie thought, looking at the young man’s face; she wouldn’t put Du

“I’m sorry—”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to hear that again. You don’t trust me, I see that. But you’re not the kind to gladden an old cop’s heart, either. I know you’re unlicensed, unsupervised, unauthorized. An amateur with a gun.”

“If that’s what you think of me,” Sylvie said. She tried to hand back the photograph. He closed his hands into fists.

“I told you,” he said, eyes dark with unhappiness. “I checked into you. You’re a vigilante. The only saving grace I see is that there’s no system set up to deal with the supernatural. I’m trying to ignore the thought that says even if Metro-Dade had processing forms for rogue angels and werewolves, you’d still act as you saw fit.”

“This from a man who calls himself the god of Justice,” Sylvie said, finally setting the photograph facedown on the stairs. Out of sight, out of mind.

“I was a cop first,” he said.

Sylvie shook her head. “What, you just woke up one morning and were a god? It doesn’t work like that. Men don’t become gods. Men don’t have that kind of power. At most, humans can borrow it or manipulate it. Not own it.”

“You don’t know as much as you think you do, Sylvie,” he said. “You want to watch out for that. That’s the kind of thing that comes back to haunt you.” In his eyes, grey skies rolled, slaty and darkening. “But maybe you know that already.”

She shied when Du

“I can’t help you.” Finally, finally she mastered the flat conviction to her voice that should drive him off.

He leaned against the wall, slumping. “I’m sorry, Sylvie. I don’t think you understand. You don’t have a choice.” His voice sounded dragged out of him, ending in a whisper.

Familiar rage buoyed Sylvie after the first shock. Always the same with his type. It always came down to threats. “You may claim godhood, but last I checked I still had free will.”

“Free will,” he said, “is overrated and not as powerful as you think. To be truly free, Sylvie, you have to care only for yourself. To care for no one else.”

“You’re threatening my friends,” she said, “my family? Is that it? After all your talk about justice, you’re going to play mob boss?”

He said, still in that strained half whisper, “Gods radiate their influence around them. Very rarely do we linger in the mortal world. When we do, it has ramifications. I need Bran found. And the world will bend to that, whether it knows it or not.” He turned his head, looking toward the front of the store, and Sylvie’s eyes followed.

It had grown dark in the last few minutes of their conversation, but unwilling to take her eyes from him, Sylvie hadn’t noticed it much. Cloud cover, an early storm rolling in. Her blood chilled when she saw the reality.

It wasn’t the sky that had darkened. Instead, her glass doors and windows were blocked, filled by policemen, motionless, peering in with blank eyes. Waiting.

“Come here,” Du

Surveil that, she thought, a quick, fleeting satisfaction trying to surface. Du

“Everyone who is mine, everyone who falls under the aegis of Justice, will hunt. But they hunt without understanding, without control, just a reflection of my need to find him. And the more desperate I grow—”

“The harder they search,” Sylvie finished. “I get the picture. It’s not just my friends and family you’re holding over my head. It’s the city.”

Across the street, nearly swamped in the uniformed mass, the sisters grouped themselves. Alekta raised her head and gri

Sylvie shut the door, thinking dark thoughts about power. Du

“You’ll find him?” Du

“What if I fail?” Sylvie asked.

Du

“And they’re the stick to make sure I do my best,” Sylvie said. “Them and your sisters.”

“Not mine,” he muttered. “The sisters.”

“You want me to take your case; you won’t take no for an answer, and you’ve got the power to make my life extremely difficult and very short,” Sylvie said. “I suppose that means there’s no carrot to the stick. Just a do-it-or-else kind of clause.” Bitterness laced her voice. Maddening to take on a case when she wanted to quit; to do so without remuneration made her want to spit.

His face cleared a little in surprise. “No, of course you’ll get paid. Name your price. I am a god, Sylvie, whether you choose to accept it or not. Your fee could reflect that. What do you want?”