Erinya nuzzled her throat, and Sylvie managed to still her instinctive reaction to jerk away. If she torqued her ribs once more today, she’d probably faint. If she passed out, the Fury might eat her; right now, Erinya had the teeth for it, curving needles the color of ancient ivory. Bony stubs protruded from her shoulder joints, flared back and ended abruptly, like stripped bat wings, broken off.
“You smell like that old cat,” Erinya complained. “That’s where you were? Hidden beneath her time? Smothered in her memories of sand?”
Old cat, Sylvie thought, mind dragging away from pain into rational thought. Old cat. Anna D. “How old is she?” Irrelevant really, to everything else, but—she cast a furtive glance at the closed door, at the man behind it—she wanted to know.
“Forever,” Erinya said. “The only one. The oldest thing ever.”
The oldest thing—well then, maybe, Sylvie would allow that Anna D might know what she was talking about. Maybe. Still didn’t excuse playing games with the information.
Sylvie knelt up with a wince and reached for the first-aid kit. She scored another Advil or two for herself and dry-swallowed, then pulled out gauze, sutures, the curved needle.
“Take off your shirt,” Sylvie said. Erinya grinned wolfishly, and the spiderwebbed, torn mesh of her shirt began to sink into her skin, first, like dark veins moving beneath pale flesh, then like a shadow sinking into deep water, vanishing.
“That’ll work,” Sylvie said, and tried not to wonder about the jacket she had borrowed. Surely the Fury wouldn’t have let her wander off with a chunk of her skin? No, Erinya had said Bran had bought it for her.
Sylvie shook the thoughts away and stopped her hands from trembling. Erinya seemed minded to allow her to play doctor; still, best not flaunt an unsteady hand.
The wound was worse than she had thought—the mesh of the not-shirt had tangled shadows over it, disguising its depth, its breadth. A raw slash ran from just above Eri’s hipbone, across her muscled belly, up under her scant breast, going deeper. Sylvie put her hand out and leaned Erinya forward, looking at her back. Exit wound there, a triangular tear where the spine should be.
“Spear?” Sylvie asked.
“She was pushing me all over this city,” Erinya said. “Wrought-iron fence.”
They bled, for lack of a better word, but nothing so ordinary as blood. Sylvie touched the wound with a cautious hand, drew the loose flap of skin upward. Dark fluid leaked over her fingertips like ether, cold, slippery, not quite weighty, and drizzled up her palm. It was like the ghost of blood, and her hand buzzed and shook with the touch. Inhuman, Sylvie thought again. On the surface and within.
Sylvie’s mouth dried. The skin, pulled away from the wound, revealed nothing human at all beneath. There should have been outraged tissue, carmine and gory, the creamy slick shine of exposed bone, the smell strong and foul. If Erinya had been human, the makeshift spear would have shish kebabbed the lung, liver, stomach, and severed the spinal column.
Erinya wasn’t human, and there was nothing within her flesh but the roiling ghostly blood.
“You healed fast enough when I shot you,” Sylvie said, and didn’t Erinya bridle at that reminder.
“It’s bigger than a bullet hole,” Erinya said. “And I’m . . . tired. But I’d heal, even without your help.” She cupped her hand beneath the thickest stream; the blood stained her hand, then faded inward like the shirt had done, reclaimed by her body.
“Such gratitude,” Sylvie said. It wasn’t blood; it was power. The core that was Erinya. The soul her shell was meant to contain. Soul, blood, power; for a creature like the Fury, it was all the same.
Sylvie threaded the needle, trying not to broadcast that her skills were all theory, no practice. She put the first stitch in; Erinya didn’t bother to flinch. What every med school needed, Sylvie thought, feeling a little light-headed, a practice dummy that bled but didn’t feel.
The soul-blood clung to Sylvie’s fingers, trickled upward, and coated her palms and wrists like rising smoke; she reached a point where the shaking of her hands could grow no worse, then she was done.
“Turn around,” she whispered. Erinya twisted front to back, baring the smaller wound.
“You’re pale,” Sylvie said, touching the white-mottled skin, the color of a blanched corpse. “Is it shock? Can you suffer—”
“No,” Erinya said. “Finish.”
Sylvie dragged the needle back to work. She ran her fingers along the ridged line of blue thread, testing for leakage, for wisps of ethereal blood and power. Erinya sighed, and her skin grew dark, glossy. A new shirt appeared out of flesh—this time, a scaled, leather tunic, more warlike than fashion-goth.
“If you shift shape, will the stitches—”
Erinya knocked her over in a single fluid movement. Sylvie’s back impacted against the tub, sparking white-hot pain and driving the breath from her lungs in a pained yelp.
Even before the black spots could clear from her vision, she grated out, “I kicked your ass when you weren’t injured. Do you really want a rematch—” Her bluff broke off in a gasp as Erinya licked a long swath across her defensively raised hand. Hot, damp heat licked around her wrist, diving into her palm, and sucked her first two fingers into the Fury’s mouth.
“Sylvie?” Demalion asked. “Are you all right?” The doorknob rattled and Erinya spun a leg out and kicked the door shut again.
“Mine. Taking it back,” Erinya growled through another mouthful of Sylvie’s flesh.
Taking it back? Oh. Sylvie relaxed. This wasn’t hostility, it was cleanup; Erinya was reabsorbing that spilled power, the smoky blood that stained Sylvie’s hands.
“Okay,” Sylvie said. Response enough for both of them, and all her brain could cope with at the moment.
Erinya chased the spilled power up Sylvie’s wrist, and her eyes gleamed at Sylvie’s hammering pulse. “I scared you.”
“Not even close,” Sylvie said. Never show weakness.
“Breathless,” Erinya said.
“Pain,” Sylvie said. “Broken ribs. Mishandled. Next time, ask.”
“Next time?” Erinya said, and grinned as she licked a section of skin that was completely bare of blood, a section that had never had blood on it—the tender juncture of Sylvie’s elbow. Erinya nipped at it, a tiny pinch of needle-sharp teeth that sent shock waves through Sylvie’s nerves. “Would you say yes?” Suddenly, this wasn’t about spilled power anymore, but something far more intimate.
“No,” Sylvie said. She’d played rough-and-tumble with a monster before. She didn’t repeat her mistakes. Sylvie tugged her arm away; Erinya let it go.
“I like you. You’re savage. Like me.”
Sylvie looked at Erinya’s shape, human-shaped, but not human at all, remembered the emptiness inside—Erinya was a shell, no more. At her core, all she was was hunger.
“Not in the mood,” Sylvie said. “Broken ribs, remember?”
Erinya’s predatory look became something thoughtful. She shuffled closer and tore Sylvie’s shirt open.
“I said no, Erinya.”
Erinya eyed the red scraps of T-shirt clinging to Sylvie’s skin, and pushed them off.
“Ribs,” Erinya said. She touched the bruised area with a surprisingly cautious hand. “I kill people. I trap them in the certainty of their guilt. I rip them apart with claws and teeth, because I crave the struggle. But”—she put a finger to Sylvie’s mouth—“I can kill with a thought. Crumble bone to dust, boil blood, liquefy minds.”
Sylvie’s attention never wavered. Erinya’s fingers dropped back down, traced the contours of the swollen ribs, and she said, “It’s just reversal. How hard can it be?”
“What?” Sylvie asked. Then her body jerked as pain lanced through her, a scorching supple line that zoomed up her spine, and slid out along her rib cage, winding, compressing, burning the air from her lungs like a python. She gasped, and Erinya smiled.