Gods & Monsters (40 page)

AZPIAZU SCREAMED, AND TEPEYOLLOTL ROARED, A CAT’S RAGE IN A human-shaped throat; a hundred or more years of his prey’s eluding him ended all at once.

He leaped forward, crashing through the remnants of the pond, into the feeble shield Erinya made. Erinya blindsided him, clung fast, and sent them both tumbling.

Sylvie felt the numbness in her body spreading, death spreading, and scrabbled at it, not physically—her hands were unresponsive—but willfully. She’d fought off Azpiazu’s curse before; she could do it again. She pushed at the creeping death, rejecting it, refusing it, finding that alien magic and shoving it back toward Azpiazu. The easier target. The dying god.

Like called to like, the balance tipped steadily. The creeping rot sank down her arms, her hands, crawled up and into Azpiazu’s chest. The air around them grew smoky and dull, heavy with the taste of burned blood. It itched along her skin, clung to her hair, her throat, her panting mouth, trying to find a way back in.

Tepeyollotl backhanded Erinya into the underbrush. The Fury rolled, a disjointed spill of limbs and wing, and lay still.

Sylvie wanted Tepeyollotl gone, needed him gone. He’d gotten his vengeance, even if not by his own hand: Azpiazu was slowly going to death. But Tepeyollotl kept prowling, growling under his breath. Sticking around, pacing tight circles when he could be hunting new souls, new followers—a swift and blatant display of power to regain his kingdom. Why? Awaiting his chance to kill her?

No, she thought. If he wanted her dead, she’d be dead. The struggle to push out Azpiazu’s dying curse was making her stupid. Tepeyollotl wasn’t going anywhere without trying to regain the power that Azpiazu had stolen. The power that swirled around Sylvie and Azpiazu like steam trapped in a lidded pot, hotter and hotter, close to exploding.

It must be driving him mad, she thought, forcing herself upright, leaning her weight on the knife, on Azpiazu’s body. Tepeyollotl was so close to his stolen powers, and yet, Azpiazu’s filtering had altered them just enough that he couldn’t reach out and take them. They didn’t fit right anymore.

He’d figure it out soon enough, poking and tasting the new flavor of his stolen power. Sylvie’s lashes drooped under the weight of it; her skin was smudged with Azpiazu’s last bloody breath.

Thing was, Azpiazu’s death hadn’t solved the imminent problem. Freed the women, yes, but Tepeyollotl and loose god-power . . . Tepeyollotl threw back his head and screamed frustration. Lightning lanced from the sky, started the trees burning, tangled snarls of fire leaping from branch to branch. Sparks spattered the shaking ground, singed Erinya’s fur, spurred her to bare consciousness.

If Tepeyollotl got his power back, they’d be standing at ground zero for the god version of a nuclear blast. If the power just . . . dispersed, every bad cess witch in Miami would suck it up and spit it back out in a thousand malicious ways.

Sylvie’s body ached. Shuddered with the magic winding around Azpiazu’s body, around her throat. It felt like that zombie constrictor again, all malevolence and injury just waiting to strike.

Tepeyollotl lowered his gaze from the sky, looked at Sylvie. She met those huge, blood-lit eyes, and knew she was out of time. He was coming for his stolen power, and coming for it now. If she wanted to keep it from him, keep it from the witches and sorcerers . . . she was going to have to take it for herself.

Her little dark voice screamed warning. She knew what happened to people who grasped magic beyond their abilities, knew that Azpiazu’s death would look gentle in comparison and yet . . . it seemed so easy to just reach out. To put her hand on Azpiazu’s rotting chest and bones and pull instead of push. To seek out the source of that char-smoke-blood power and cup it into her palms.

It was like putting her hands into the heart of a fire. They went from numb to scalding in a heartbeat. She’d expected the god-power to fight her.

It didn’t.

At her first touch, her first tug, the lurking god-energy leaped toward her and poured itself into her skin.

The world was

White-hot.

Her skin was

White-hot.

Her eyes—

She saw
everything
around her. The violent blurs of power-life-hunger-will that were Erinya and Tepeyollotl, the faltering hiccups of humans forced into animal shapes, so unnatural it made her teeth itch and burn, her nerves scream. She knew them, felt them all, their fears, their hopes, their dreams.

Tierney Wales, so scared, yet trying to do the right thing. A man who mourned his murderous ghosts like some men mourned their children.

The women—Lupe Fernandez, Anamaria Garcia, Rita Martinez, Elena Llosa—their tangled lives ran kaleidoscope through her mind, college student, schoolteacher, bartender, high-schooler, all their wants, and desires. She knew them down to their cores. Knew which animal shape was which, saw the overlay of their spirits in animal flesh. Saw the wounds that she and Erinya had dealt in defending themselves. Felt each wound like a brand on her skin. The jaguar who’d been blown into the trees, its back broken when Tepeyollotl came. The last wolf still crouched, slavering and terrified, in the underbrush.

Tepeyollotl lunged forward, nails clawing at her; Sylvie desperately missed her guns, and the thought was enough.

Bullets sprayed in Tepeyollotl’s direction, created and fired by her will instead of a gun. Each one felt like it ripped something out of her, replaced it with more magic.

Sylvie’s little dark voice shrieked sheer disgust, utter repulsion at the power burning inward, boring into every cell of her, seeking a home. Her body was flame.

She couldn’t contain this power.

She was.

She shouldn’t be able to. She was only human.

But more than that—

She didn’t
want
the power. It revolted her, this giant seething mass of magic crawling around, curling through her veins, out her fingers, through her hair. It invaded and tainted every breath she pulled into straining lungs, reinforcing every bone in her body like a coating of molten steel, jacking her heart rate to hummingbird speed. Her skin hissed with energy, a living force trying to remake her every molecule into something more. Something greater.

Something inhuman.

She burned in the night like a bonfire, and snake patterns slid over her flesh, red, black, yellow—serpent colors. Sylvie groaned, tried to hold the power at a distance, but it was as hard to shake off as lava.

Erinya staggered to three feet, flesh sloughing off with creeping rot, her exposed core smoky and scarlet, and Sylvie saw a sudden escape from an inhuman future as an unwilling god.

“Erinya!”

THE FURY WAS TOO SLOW TO DODGE TEPEYOLLOTL’S REFLEXIVE ATTACK, and Sylvie reached out and yanked the Fury toward her with all the aimless power smoldering in her soul. Erinya disappeared from beneath Tepeyollotl’s grip, reappeared skin-close to Sylvie, sprawled at her feet, so broken, still angry, still wanting to fight. Sylvie wanted to give her the means to do so.

Sylvie reached down, and said wildly, “I owe you? Come and get it!” and pressed her hands down into Eri’s wild hair, into her scaly skin, and kicked the power outward. Evicted it with prejudice. Forced it into a new home.

Erinya arced under Sylvie’s hands, struggling even as Sylvie force-fed her strength and that unwanted power. Erinya’s false flesh sealed up around the gaping wounds; her scales smoothed to obsidian; her feathers grew thick and glossy and scarlet. Her teeth lengthened, grew sharp, grew white, near glowing in the dark.

Sylvie’s heart slowed, her skin cooled, pinging like an overtaxed engine. The patterns crawling her flesh slowed. Retreated. The glow oozed away from Sylvie, lit every single scale and feather on Erinya’s body.

“What did you—”

“You owe
me
now,” Sylvie said. “Get rid of Tepeyollotl. You’re a match for him.”

It was the best thing about Erinya, Sylvie thought, collapsing, her legs gone numb and shaky beneath her. Give her the whiff of a violent command, and she was all over it, no hesitation. It was also the worst thing about her—that endless appetite for violence.

Erinya and Tepeyollotl collided physically and magically with an impact that made Sylvie think of an avalanche. The ground shuddered, trembled, cracked wide. The ponds and fountains split, spilled their water deep into the screaming earth. The air sounded like high tide coming, crashing against a rocky shore. Sinkholes gaped, and Sylvie grabbed Wales and dragged his deadweight away from a sudden edge.

Sylvie’s stomach churned—a remnant of god-magic still working away in her, trying to rebuild her, to claim her. She tried to push it out, but it lingered, making itself at home. Fine. If it wanted to be owned by her, she would use it.

She gave it purpose, sent it pouring out to rupture all of Azpiazu’s remaining spells, waking Wales from his stupor, healing the wounds on the shape-shifting women. It was barely enough to do the job, sputtered out within her, ripping itself out by the root as she forced it to obey. Using that power, even that fragment of it, felt like she was renovating her body using razor blades.

Erinya rolled Tepeyollotl, pinned him, knees and wing tips on his loosely slung pelt. “Stay down,” she growled.

Sylvie dumped Wales out of her lap and started talking fast. “You lost, Tepeyollotl. Your empire’s long gone; your enemy is dead—”

That elicited a snarl, more earthly upheaval. Windows shattered in the main house; she was surprised they’d lasted that long, and Sylvie hastened over that point. Reminding a god that a mortal had taken his prey? Not a good way to make friends.

“You’re damaged goods,” she said. “You’re
weak
. If you stay on earth, you won’t attract new followers. You’ll attract hunters. Not just the Fury. But sorcerers and humans who want a bite of your power.”

“And you,” Tepeyollotl said. “You would kill me if you could.”

His voice resonated in her bones, a beehive rumble that carried the threat of pain. She breathed steadily through the aftershocks, and said, “Yes. I don’t want your power. I want you dead. Or gone. The choice is yours.”

Tepeyollotl jerked in Erinya’s claws, a mindless, surprised twitch. Sylvie bared her teeth, met that red-tinged gaze, and said, “Make the right one. Look at the shape you’re in now. Imagine what I could do if I was trying to kill you instead of just stopping you.”

Erinya laughed, leaned close, and licked Tepeyollotl’s scarred cheek. “She could do it, too, I bet.”

“Gone?” he said.

“Retreat and wait for your time to come ’round again,” Sylvie said. “You’ve got time. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a new interest in you. You’ll find new followers, grow strong again.”

It was an effort to sound in control, like this was the best solution for him. Tepeyollotl might be reduced, a shell of what he once had been, but he was still a god. His influence radiated outward, and the world around him adjusted to his will.

Right then, luckily, he was confused and focused on fighting Erinya and listening to Sylvie. Even with that, though, there were changes.

Vizcaya’s crumbled stones had shifted, changed from French-styled gardens to the beginnings of pyramids. Bright sparks lit the underbrush, shadowy shapes of cats in all sizes from tabby to Florida panther. Calling like to like. His own allies approaching.

“Go?” he said, tasting the idea for palatability. “But not forever.” He groaned, threw Erinya off him in a long ripple of contorting sinew and tendon.

Erinya crouched, wings mantled, neck arched, teeth bared.

Tepeyollotl vanished without further words, and Sylvie jerked her gaze to Erinya. “Is he gone, or just gone somewhere else in the world? Are we going to have to hunt him down?”

“Gone,” Erinya said. She sounded disappointed.

Sylvie didn’t share that disappointment at all, felt dizzy with relief.

“What just happened here?” Wales asked. His voice sounded so frail after listening to gods. It made it easy to ignore him.

Her wary attention was all for Erinya.

In the heat of the battle, drowning under power she didn’t want and didn’t know how to use, giving it to Erinya had seemed a no-brainer. Now Sylvie worried. The Fury had been powerful enough as a demigod—willful and violent, but under the god of Justice’s control.

Now that Sylvie had made Erinya his equal?

Erinya shook herself, shook off the monster aspect, trying to fit back into her human guise. It wasn’t working very well; she couldn’t seem to shake away the razor-edged wings.

She flipped them back finally, sharp feathers rasping like blades in the night and paused. Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

Erinya had caught up with the rest of the class.

“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Guess no one’s going to be bossing you around any longer.”

“I can taste them all,” Erinya said. “All those evil souls—”