Gods & Monsters (16 page)

She manhandled him onto the bed, fell back against his side, and gaped at the room. She expected destruction. Cracked plaster, scorch marks, the like. But there was almost nothing. The mirror over the dresser, glimpsed between stacked-up chair legs, had gone dark, smoked, as if it had gotten a better glance at the intruder than she had and burned from the inside out, incapable of reflecting it back.

A god, she thought again. And they were lucky. It hadn’t manifested completely. Hadn’t done more than cast its shadow on the mundane world. She spared a brief, belated thanks to the god of Justice: When he’d walked the earth, he’d contained his godly strength as best he could. This god didn’t care enough to do so.

She got up on shaky legs, and something crunched beneath her feet. Bone. She let her gaze drop, held through the swinging dizziness that caused, and let her eyes focus slowly. A skeletal hand. One of several.

The Hand of Glory had transformed from a withered, yellow mass of flesh and bone to a hand stripped completely to bone and charred black all the way through. Like Pompeii’s victims had, when she touched the hand, it disintegrated to a crisp pile of brittle ash.

Guess they’d finally found a way to destroy the Hands of Glory in one swoop, Sylvie thought wryly. That could have been useful a week ago. Now it was only a
huh
and a footnote in the supernatural files her memory kept.

She kicked it aside, away, staggered into the bathroom, ran the water cold and clear in the sink, and scrubbed at her face and nape. She felt more human at once. Another cloth, wetted down, still dripping, came with her back into the main room. She slapped it across Wales’s forehead, watched him flinch with some relief.
Just out, then. Not dead.

She folded the comforter—scratchy, floral polyester—around him, cocooning him. He muttered, ducked his face into it, and dislodged the washcloth. He flailed a spastic hand in complaint as water ran down his neck and spine, then gave up, passing out or falling asleep. One or the other.

Sylvie dug her bullet out of the wall where it had lodged, dumped the misshapen thing into her pocket. That was the final straw as far as her own energy levels went. She staggered over to the other bed, face planted in the abused pillow, and was out before she could do more than wonder if housekeeping would wake them in the morning.

SHE WOKE TO HER PHONE RINGING SHRILLY, TO WALES’S GROANING something that might be
Make it stop
, to fading dreams of someone growling in her ear, and to a body gone stiff and sore. Bastard, she thought. She hoped the gunman’s wound got infected. She’d ill-wish their godly visitor, too, if she had a name to fling her curses toward.

Fumbling an arm across the stretch of clean sheets brought the phone to her hand. She flipped it open, “What?”

“You didn’t call me back,” Lio said.

“Your guard-dog wife hung up on me,” Sylvie said. A moment later, she put her face in her pillow and groaned. She’d intended to talk to Lio, but after she’d inhaled enough caffeine to be reasonably civil, at least to the point of not insulting the man’s wife.

Lio was silent for an angry second, then sighed. “Did you find anything?” He sounded good. Lucid. Impatient. Cop on the mend.

“Found everything,” Sylvie said. She sat up in the bed, shoved her hair out of her face. “It’s complicated.”

“Magic?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Good news, bad news? Good news is the women aren’t actually dead—well, except for the one who burned up—Jennifer Costas was her name, by the way.

“The rest are in mortal danger, but alive. At least if I don’t screw around too much. They’re kind of on a time limit. More good news? I found them again. Bad news? I left them there, and you can’t send anyone out to move them. They have to stay
missing
until we fix this.”

“What?” All the irritation he’d suppressed earlier came out in one sharp bark. “You what?”

“Look, Lio, I don’t like it either. But right now, I don’t have a choice. I could tell you where the women are, but that would just lead to a repeat of what put you in the hospital.”

They argued for a few minutes longer, repeating the same material—
How could she? This was why he didn’t like private investigators. This was why she didn’t like cops. They didn’t understand the risks
—until Wales shut her up by hurling a pillow into her face and slinking into the bathroom. “Make coffee,” he snapped, and slammed the door.

Guess he wasn’t suffering too much damage from spell shock, then, if he was lucid, irritable, and hogging the shower.

“Look, Lio,” Sylvie said. “I do have some info you can work on, even from home. I took pictures. If you can match them up with missing people . . . No, I’m not telling you how to do your job.” She tugged at her hair in increasing frustration and finally hung up. They were never going to be easy allies, but dammit, she needed him to keep the cops occupied, to distract the ISI.

She threw the phone down on the bed, fisted her hands in the sheets. It just pissed her off. A government agency designed to deal with the supernatural, and they were so bad at it that she couldn’t just tell them where the women were and trust to them to fix the problem. A government agency that was so bad it didn’t even realize how fucked-up it was. They’d poke, and pry, and drag out some low-level witch or psychic who’d preach caution. Then they’d ignore him or her and bull on ahead.

She heard clattering and chatter in the hallways—the maids talking about the shaking last night, talking about crazy guests, and Sylvie took it as a sign. She might not be ready for the day, but it was more than ready for her.

First up, the office and faxing the pics to Lio. He might be pissed at her, but he was homebound, bored, and far too decent a cop to let the information go just because it came from her; he’d look into it.

Wales stumbled out of the bathroom, towel slung around narrow hips and looking like he’d been on a three-week bender. Dripping, he started coffee, leaned over the pot as if caffeine steam was a panacea for what ailed him.

“So what the hell happened?” he asked. He frowned at the charcoal splotches on the carpet, all that was left of the Hands. “Last thing I recall, you were dragging me out midspell. You do like to live dangerously.”

She made grabby fingers at the mug of coffee he poured, and with a growl, he handed it over. “So . . .”

“So, next time listen to me when I say stop the spell,” Sylvie said. “Then you won’t get a magical concussion. Did you get anything more out of the conversation with Jennifer than I did? ’Cause I heard mostly gibberish. Before she got yanked away.” He looked like he was going to demand more answers, answers she wasn’t ready to give yet. Talking about gods before breakfast was just . . . inhumane. She took a deliberate sip of coffee, mmmed happily though the coffee didn’t deserve it.

As an early-morning distraction, it worked.

Wales followed her second sip with a hooded, hungry gaze, then poured himself a cup. “I was closer to her, got some of her memories relayed up close and personal.”

“Ugh,” Sylvie said. “Glad I missed that. Get anything useful to go with the horror show?”

“Yeah,” he said. As usual, he qualified his first positive response. “Maybe. I might be able to peel back at least one layer of the spell.”

“Break the stasis? Kill the spell like you suggested?”

He shook his head. “After losing the Hands? Best I can do is buy the women some time, weaken whatever’s draining them.”

“That’s not nothing,” she said. “You going to be up to a trip to the ’Glades?” Sylvie asked. It wasn’t quite the question she meant. She meant was he up to trying another tricky life-endangering series of spells after the magical backlash he’d suffered last night.

He poured a second cup of coffee, killing the pot, and said, after a long, scalding swallow, “Reckon I’ll find out.”

THE SUN WAS BRIGHT AND HIGH AS THEY SET OUT, EVEN IF THEIR moods weren’t. Their trip to the Everglades had been delayed while Wales took the time to pack up the sad remains of his Hands of Glory, brushing up the ash with careful attention to detail. When she’d raised a brow in inquiry, Wales had said, “Caution always pays off.”

Sylvie had asked, half fearing the answer, “Marco wasn’t one of the ghosts guarding the circle, was he?”

“No,” Wales said. “He’s safe.”

Safe, Sylvie thought. Not the first word she’d use to describe Marco. Not even the tenth. But it was a little like the affection between a boy and his snarling, mangy junkyard dog—not something you wanted to come between.

“Good,” Sylvie lied. Marco might be a useful tool, but he made her nervous.

Wales had merely shrugged, finished tidying ash into the plastic laundry bag supplied by the hotel, and headed for the truck.

Then she broached the subject again. It wasn’t that she cared—as far as she was concerned, the Hands of Glory were abominations—but an upset necromancer just seemed like a bad idea. “They’re at peace now,” she said. “Not slaves any longer. You got ’em away from the CIA, took care of them, and—”

“Jesus,” Wales said, “I ain’t mourning them. I’m freaking the fuck out. We could have been killed last night.”

Sylvie clicked her mouth shut and turned her attention back to the blacktop unrolling beneath her tires. They were out of the city proper already, had seen an alligator or two sliding into watery ditches alongside the road. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Should be,” he muttered. “You got any idea of what it was that came for us? ’Cause I’ve dealt with death guardians before, creatures that hold the souls of the dead to their proper planes, but that wasn’t—”

“I think it was a god,” Sylvie said.

“God,” Wales said.

“Yup,” Sylvie said.

He stared into the sun dazzle reflecting off the watery ditches alongside the road. “Any particular god?”

“An angry one?” Sylvie said. At his flat look, she elaborated. “I don’t know. One that doesn’t care overmuch for keeping a low profile. Not one of the big ones, or we’d be a smear on the wall that the maids would be quitting over. Still, its shadow did enough damage, don’t you think?”

“Don’t know. Missed most of it,” Wales said.

“Hopefully, you won’t get another chance,” Sylvie said. “Gods on earth are bad news. They’re . . . disruptive just by their presence. Monsters and cataclysms. A hurricane in Chicago—”

“That was a god?” he interrupted.

“Yeah,” she said. “Several, actually. Political infighting. The smaller ones—the demigods—aren’t so bad in comparison. They fuck things up when they’re down here, but not to that scale. Mostly, they just get people killed.”

“Gods? I don’t want to play anymore,” he said. “I like my life.”

“Then you’re smarter than the soul-devourer,” she said.

He cocked his head at her, frowning as if he almost remembered what she was talking about.

“One of the things Jennifer said,” Sylvie explained. “That she’d been given to him. That he was coming for her.”

Wales groaned. “Stupid, arrogant bastard. Made a deal with a god. Bartering for borrowed power from a god to take out an enemy. I really, really want to leave town.”

“Tough it up, Tex,” she said. “You drew the short straw. I need you.”

“Lucky, lucky me,” he whispered.

“Just . . . try to stay under its radar,” Sylvie said. “Keep a low profile for a while. No ghost summoning.”

“Not a problem,” Wales said.

GPS pointed out they were there, and Sylvie pulled the truck off the road, coasting to a bumpy halt on the dead-end access road.

Wales looked out into the heat shimmer, clutched his satchel tight, and licked his lips. He opened the truck door but didn’t get out. Sylvie walked around the truck, looked in at him.

“You up for this?” Sylvie asked.

“Don’t got a choice,” Wales said. “We can’t leave them there again. I’ve got to try.”

Sylvie grabbed his satchel, slung it over her shoulder, gritted her teeth, and bore it as the edge of it pressed up against her bruises. She was tough. Wales . . . wasn’t. The sun had driven out some of his pallor, but he still held himself like he hurt.

He was right, though. They didn’t have a choice.