“So your little assistant looked into me, I guess,” Cachita said.
“She did. Elena Valdes isn’t your cousin. You aren’t a reporter.”
“Hey, I could be,” Cachita said. It was a feeble rebuttal. The young woman looked suddenly tired. Burdened. It was more than just the sleep disruption; it was ground-in stress that she had managed to cover up with her act.
“Sit,” Sylvie said.
“I’m the host here,” Cachita said. “Just so you remember.”
“Sit,” Sylvie repeated.
Cachita flounced into a seat, a little of her previous attitude surfacing. “If this ends with bondage, I’m going to be pissed.”
“Who are you?”
Cachita laughed. “That’s your question? Isn’t that obvious? Sylvie, I’m you.”
SYLVIE LOOKED AROUND THE ROOM, THE GLOOM OF IT, THE FILES stapled to the walls, the disorder and chaos of a life, and grimaced. She pulled up the only other seat in the living room, a rickety ladder-back chair with a cane seat, perched on it. “You’re a PI?”
“I’m a god’s bitch,” Cachita said. “Just like you and Justice.”
“I’m no one’s dog,” Sylvie said.
“Then you’re lucky. Or deluded,” Cachita said. She put her face in her hands. “Or your god is kind.”
“Gods aren’t kind,” Sylvie said. “Not their nature.”
“Tell me about it,” Cachita gasped. Laughed again. “Oh god.”
“So you’re Tepeyollotl’s—”
“Yes.”
“He hired you? To find Azpiazu?”
“Hired is a human word,” Cachita said. “I’m not sure there was anything human about what happened to me.”
Sylvie said, “Tell me?”
Cachita shuddered.
“C’mon,” Sylvie said. “You’ve latched onto me. You’ve studied me. You’ve been hunting any excuse to talk to me. You’re dying for an audience.”
“Your girl looked me up? She tell you I was an anthro student?”
“Yeah.”
“Latin American culture,” Cachita said. “I went down there. I worked there. In Mexico. I went down worried about los narcos. About my health. About making something new and noteworthy academically out of plowed ground. I didn’t worry about gods. I didn’t even believe in them.”
“Atheists are fair game,” Sylvie said.
“Know that now.” Cachita rubbed her face. Her lashes were spiky with tears that didn’t quite fall. Too controlled for that. Too tired for the catharsis of it.
“So instead of finding a study topic, you found Tepé.”
“He found me. My dreams first, then my waking hours. Until every moment of every day was filled with his presence. He’s not . . . He’s not very good at communicating,” she said. “It was like being forced under a waterfall while someone yells at you. Except the waterfall was blood and screams and knives. I thought I was going insane. I was insane after a month of it. Then I started waking up with a jaguar in my room.”
“Off-putting,” Sylvie said.
“One word for it,” Cachita said. “ ‘Terrifying’ was another. But it shocked me sane again. It wasn’t in my head, you get that? Something there. Something impossible. But real. Something I could touch. Something I could smell. Other people saw it. I could tell by the screaming.” Cachita shrugged. “The last time I saw it was in a hotel, and it had stopped first to eat some woman’s dog.
“So the next time the yelling started, I yelled back. It was that or crumble. It helped. He stopped sending jaguars and shaking things. Still get house cats and uncontrollable kudzu. And a lot of anger. He wants Azpiazu found. He wants Azpiazu dead.”
“He give you any ideas on how to accomplish that?”
“I just need to summon him,” Cachita said. “That part’s easy. It’s finding Azpiazu that’s fucking things up.”
“Been there, done that,” Sylvie said. “Let’s back up. Summon Tepeyollotl? That’s not going to happen on my watch.”
“You found him? And you didn’t call me?” Cachita wailed it, a woman who learned her chance at freedom might have escaped her.
“You lied to me,” Sylvie said. “I didn’t have any reason to think you’d be useful. Your own damn fault.”
Cachita panted, brought herself under control. “I thought we were going to be partners.”
“You researched me,” Sylvie said. “You know I don’t do partners.”
“What happened?” Cachita said. “With Azpia—”
“I know what you mean,” Sylvie said. She closed her eyes briefly, the better to shut out Cachita’s burgeoning hope. “We found his lair. We saved one of the women. Then he came back and caught us in the act.”
“No,” Cachita said. “No, dammit, he’ll have moved by now! He’ll be gone. You ruined our chance. He’ll be in a new state.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Sylvie said. “Stop panicking. He wants something, and he’s close to getting it, Cachita. Stop reacting and start thinking. Why did Tepeyollotl change his mind?”
“What?” Cachita said. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, dared to rise and start pacing. Sylvie watched, but didn’t try to make her sit again. Cachita looked like she was the kind who thought on her feet. “Tepeyollotl changed his mind. . . . You mean the curse?”
“I do,” Sylvie said. “First he curses Azpiazu with uncontrollable shape-shifting and immortality. Then he . . . decides no? To kill him instead?”
“Azpiazu controlled the curse,” Cachita said. “That was never Tepeyollotl’s intention.”
“But it took him this long to decide to send someone after him? A human agent? No. That doesn’t make sense. Something changed, Cachita. You’re not a reporter. But you were a student, and you’ve done decent research. Take yourself out of the equation and think about it. Why kill him now?”
Cachita said, “I’m the first human he’s reached out to in centuries. I knew that. His language. His thought patterns. He’s archaic and totally uninvolved with this modern age. He’s violent and simplistic. He wants. He takes.”
“So what does he want?” Sylvie said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t research him. Not if he’s holding your leash.”
Cachita shook her head, not a rebuttal, but a sort of exasperation. “You want to talk about Tepeyollotl now? Azpiazu’s the problem.”
“Yes and no,” Sylvie said. “Azpiazu’s pissed off the god. He’s outthought Tepeyollotl’s curse and punishment. But if we don’t know how Tepeyollotl thinks—”
“He doesn’t,” Cachita said. “He’s broken. Badly broken. Look, Shadows, here’s a history lesson. Tezcatlipoca was one of the primary gods in Aztec culture. He had . . . aspects, like a mirror. He showed different faces, different things, to his people depending on their needs. He juggled personalities. He reshaped himself, over and over and over. He was clever. He was cunning. He was . . . everything.”
“ ‘Was’ being the operative word,” Sylvie said.
“When the Aztecs crashed. In the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards came, complete with sorcerers as well as soldiers, Tezcatlipoca was spread thin across his region. Focused in different directions. I’m not sure what the sorcerers did—Tepeyollotl doesn’t remember—but he shattered. Became only the parts, separate and fading. Tepeyollotl, the jaguar god, the earthquake bringer, is all that’s left of Tezcatlipoca, and he’s mostly animal instinct.”
“So Azpiazu can outthink him,” Sylvie said. “Tepeyollotl’s curse was powerful but simple. A reaction to a slight—”
“Killing of his acolyte by a sorcerer,” Cachita said. Her pacing slowed. “Yes. He reacted at once. He didn’t think about it. He hates sorcerers.” Outside in the yard, in the overgrown grass, cats howled. Cachita flinched.
“He can hear us?”
“I’m not sure if they’re his spies or just reacting to his interest in me,” Cachita said.
“Assume spies,” Sylvie said. “Safer that way.”
“Well, I??
?ve no secrets from him,” Cachita said. “He’s been in my head, in my dreams, in every thought I ever had. Go ahead and speculate. Why not? It’s not like he’s easily offended or something. Not like he curses those he thinks are betraying him.”
Sylvie got up, found a can of soda in Cachita’s barebones kitchen, and passed it over to the woman. She was close to hyperventilating. Cachita pushed it away, and Sylvie said, “Take a sip or two. Calm down. You’re not betraying him. You want Azpiazu dead. So do I. We’re just trying to spare Tepeyollotl from making the trip to this plane.”
Cachita said, “It’d be easier if we just called him when we found Azpiazu.”
“No, Cachita,” Sylvie said. “No, it really wouldn’t. There’s nothing easy about a god’s presence on earth.”
She looked mulish, and Sylvie fought down the urge to argue. She could press that point later. The more urgent problem was Azpiazu. “He’s going to need another woman,” Sylvie said. “The spell is broken, right now.”
“You don’t think he’s just running,” Cachita said, coming back to the topic Sylvie needed her to focus on. “You think something else is happening.”
“Yes,” Sylvie gritted. “Wales, my consultant, says the magic he’s using is too strong, getting stronger.”
Cachita licked her lips. “Magic is like any force. Struggle with it, and you get stronger. Isn’t that all it is?”
“The weight he’s lifting is a godly one,” Sylvie said. “Not exactly easy to build up to. Even if it’s a broken god.”
Cachita stepped to the papered-over window, leaned her head against it, then slunk toward Sylvie, as wary as one of the feral cats outside. She crouched near Sylvie’s chair, and said, voice a bare whisper, “Thing is. I thought. I thought I was getting used to him. To his words. The feel of him in my mind. In my dreams. But maybe”—another glance toward the walls of the house, another pitch lower in tone—“maybe he’s getting weaker.”
Sylvie let her breath out, not in the hiss of epiphany she wanted but a slower thing, soundless, careful as Cachita was careful. But it would explain Azpiazu’s strength. And it matched with what Wales had told her, what she knew herself.
Magic was a shifty kind of thing. Most magic was about creating a link between two objects, the better to manipulate one. But the thing was, the binding went both ways. If Azpiazu had been less clever, he’d be suffering as the god had intended. But instead, he was a tricky, malevolent bastard, used to transforming materials he had to hand.
She and Wales knew he was using the women to filter the curse power that was pouring out of the god’s intent. Turning it to his purpose. Maddening enough to Tepeyollotl. But if he was doing more. If the filter also pulled . . .
Tepeyollotl was bleeding power to his enemy.
Azpiazu was sucking up the strength of a god.
Sylvie’s blood cooled in her veins. The humid air in Cachita’s house seemed suddenly as clammy as an underground crypt. She wiped at the nape of her neck, stole back the soda, and pressed it to her face.
“Sylvie?”
If Azpiazu was siphoning off a god’s power, bit by bit by bit, that was bad enough. That could turn a human magic-user into something very horrific indeed. It should be a self-correcting problem. A human had limitations, couldn’t control a god’s power, couldn’t bear its weight.
But Azpiazu was an immortal. And more. He had a plan.
An immortal who shared a god’s power became a demigod. Like Erinya. A Fury in the cause of Justice.
Azpiazu didn’t seem like the kind to take orders.
Sylvie felt the last piece drop into place. “Soul-devourer.” They’d bandied the term back and forth enough. Now she understood what it meant. Azpiazu wasn’t just taking power. He was taking souls.
Back in Chicago, she’d stopped Lilith from stealing a god’s power, from replacing him as a god. The easiest way to become a god: kill one, replace it.
Sylvie thought that with filtered god-power, with his own store of souls, Azpiazu might have found his own way to budding godhood. He wouldn’t be Tepeyollotl’s servant. He’d be his rival. His enemy. His equal.
THE SILENCE IN THE ROOM LINGERED, BROKEN ONLY BY THE COOLING hiss and pop of the carbonated drink in Sylvie’s hand, by the rustle of cats moving through the high grass outside. Chasing lizards, Sylvie thought. Recalled the two-headed reptiles she’d seen around Azpiazu, in the ’Glades, and in the city.
A god’s power, bent in two directions. A god’s power bending to two wills. No wonder the smaller animals were warping around it. It was only a matter of time before bigger changes were apparent. Before the world started yielding in a massive way to Azpiazu’s will.
“You know something,” Cachita said. “You know what he’s doing.”
“Fucking up the world,” Sylvie said.
“That’s not an answer,” Cachita said. “Share and share alike.”
Sylvie wanted to keep Cachita out of it but doubted Tepeyollotl would allow it. “What do you know about gods?”
“Mythologically, or practically? ’Cause I don’t know how standard Tepeyollotl is.”
“Gods have power,” Sylvie said. “Varying amounts, but all of it more than a human can ever hope to touch. Under normal circumstances.”
“Azpiazu—”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “But there’s more to gods than power. That’s a lot of it. That’s the shiny part. The thing people always think about. Power. Omnipotence. Give or take a few degrees. But they’re also about collecting souls. It’s so important to them that all the pantheons have an agreement not to touch each other’s people. To divide up the nonbelievers. We’re more than property to them. We’re assets of some kind. Gold bullion.
“The curse laid on Azpiazu was supposed to do more than just make him suffer. It was supposed to mark souls for Tepeyollotl to claim. He’s a forgotten god mostly. Broken. He needs souls to heal. To regain his strength. His place in the worlds. He’s dependent on the atheists. The unclaimed ones. But Azpiazu got fancy.”
“He’s stealing Tepeyollotl’s power and the souls,” Cachita said. Her cheeks blushed hot with rage. “You should have called me, Sylvie. I should have summoned Tepeyollotl. It would all be over. And instead, you fucked this up and went it alone, and now you’re telling me Azpiazu’s trying to be a god? He’s a serial killer, Sylvie. Is that really someone we want to deify?”
“We’re not summoning Tepeyollotl. No matter what,” Sylvie said. “I will shoot you dead before you can if it comes to that. And he’ll have to find another agent.”
Cachita reeled back. “I don’t understand—”
“In Chicago,” Sylvie said. “A month or so back. You read about the hurricane midcountry.”
“Yes.”
“The freak accidents. The weird shit that people don’t want to talk about.”
“Over a hundred people died, I remember,” Cachita said. “Wait.”
“Gods,” Sylvie said. “Ready for the kicker? That was a squabble. One god restraining himself as best he could, and some petty infighting. The sky rained blood, Cachita.
“If you bring Tepeyollotl down, and Azpiazu’s as close as I think he is to godhood . . . It’ll be all-out war. They might not be as powerful as the ones in Chicago, but they won’t have any intention of playing nice. If god presence can create a hurricane on a landlocked lake, you want to see what warring gods can do in Florida?”
Cachita wrung her hands, knotted them in her hair. “I don’t know what to do, Sylvie.”
“Listen to me. Trust me.”
“You let Azpiazu escape you.”
“But we saved Maria Ruben.”
“She doesn’t matter!”
“She matters to her family,” Sylvie said. “Just because you’re dealing with gods doesn’t mean you can give up being human. Trust me. I can stop him. I can kill him.”
Pure bravado. She didn’t have a clue. Wales would have to come up with something. She’d hurt Azpiazu before. Minor injuries. But i
t was only a matter of getting the right degree to make them major ones. Mortal ones.
We kill the unkillable, her voice murmured.
Cachita’s voice left all trace of frightened vibrato behind. “All right. You’re in charge. But I’m sticking close. If I think you’re wrong, you’ll have to shoot me.”
The answer quivering on Sylvie’s lips, burning like salt in a wound, gave way to startled cursing when her phone rang shrilly in her pocket. She yanked it out. “What!”
“Sylvie,” Alex said. If Cachita had found her nerve, her iron core, Alex had lost hers. Tears drenched her voice. “Sylvie. You gotta come now. Back to the office. Please.”
“Alex,” Sylvie said. “Are you hurt? Are you—”
The phone disconnected on a whimper.
Naked terror.
Not the ISI, then. Not the police.
Sylvie thought of Maria Ruben, safe and sound in the hospital. Out of Azpiazu’s reach. But Alex . . .
“Time to move,” she told Cachita. “I think Azpiazu’s come calling.”
Cachita dithered unexpectedly, gesturing at her PJs, at her bare feet, her face blanching at the sudden call to arms.
Sylvie said, “My office. As soon as you can.”
“Shadows, wait!”
She didn’t. In the Magicus Mundi, patience was rarely a virtue.
15
Negotiations
THE TRAFFIC BETWEEN CACHITA’S QUIET SUBURB AND THE SOUTH Beach strip was dense enough that Sylvie honestly regretted not buying a motorcycle instead of a truck. Her hands danced on the wheel; her stomach soured.
She should have made sure Alex didn’t go to work until the office was magically secured again.
She jerked the truck through a gap, changed lanes in a flurry of horns, and put the pedal down. The first sight of her office made her heart jump; she’d forgotten about the bullet she’d put into the window. For a single moment, Sylvie thought maybe that was what had Alex so upset. The cracked window, the signs of violence. That happy image couldn’t hold.
If Alex had been concerned about the violence, she would have asked about Sylvie’s well-being. Not begged her to come home.