Sins & Shadows

“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,” Du

“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,” Du

“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.

Du

Bran nuzzled into Du

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 Du

Bran bit Du

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,” Du

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 wi

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 A

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 Du

A

Sylvie parked, sat in the car, wondering if she had to do this. A

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.