“Oh, it matters. Immensely,” she said. “I get it, now. You’re a god, all intrinsic power. You compared it to the ocean, you’re right. As a human, you could only carry so much of it within you. You hid the ocean, Bran, and you’re carrying that sponge.”
He opened his mouth, shut it again. “Ocean? Sponge?”
“Don’t snark. Your analogy,” she said. “You couldn’t hide your power on earth. That much power, even contained, would make ripples; witches and sorcerers would figure it was there, in the same way astronomers find black holes by their effect. You didn’t leave it on Olympus, either. A god’s power, set aside, would be fair game, right? They’d be tearing Olympus apart looking for it.”
He started to speak, one more objection or protest, and she talked over him, high on hope. “Neither heaven nor earth, not hades nor hell—” Sylvie smiled. “You stored it in an unreal place. Outside of the world. Just like us.”
Awareness bloomed in his eyes, like the rosy heat of the immortal flower. “You think it’s in an oubliette. You think I made an oubliette. I don’t know how to make—”
“Magic’s instinctive to gods, not learned. You secreted your power in a hidden place and pinched it off. Dunne couldn’t find you in this oubliette, and he’s your lover, a part of you, as well as a god. No one but you can open the safe full of goodies.”
He shrugged a shoulder again, uncomfortable. “Maybe.”
“So—look, the dilemma is that we can’t get out of this oubliette. But you can. You still have access to your power. Even in here. We have an escape hatch, connected to your skin. All you have to do is open it.”
She picked up the painting that had brought her here—torn heart, blood spray—and forced it into his hands. “I used it as a key to confound the spell. You can use it to find the path to the other oubliette. The one you control.”
23
Just Passing Through
THE LIGHT IN THE OUBLIETTE DIMMED, MAKING SYLVIE REALIZE ANEW that this little cage was Bran’s world at the moment, and like the world above, it resonated to the god. The shadows darkened around him, shielding him from her demand. The painting started to slide from his grip; he clutched it closer, like some perverse teddy bear. “I ca—”
“That better not be can’t,” she interrupted. “Of course you can. You did it before.”
“I’m barely more powerful than a sorcerer now. How can I open a spell like that?”
“I managed just fine,” Sylvie said. He didn’t need to know about Erinya’s inadvertent loan of power, of Lilith’s guidance, of the paints taken from his studio. It would only give him grounds for doubt.
“I can’t make an oubliette.” His voice, the only thing she could sense clearly of him in the growing darkness, was desperate and quiet.
“I’m not asking you to make one. I’m asking you to open the door into the one you’ve already made. I’m asking you to help me help you escape. We open the door, we go through, and we’re in an oubliette that you can leave of your own free will.”
She grabbed his wrist and dragged him toward her. The painting bobbled, but he folded it closer still. She leaned in and said, directly into his ear, “Bran, you can do this. Stop hiding, and do it.”
He shuddered; she felt the shivers move through his wrist, traveling his body like an animal’s dying spasm. She said, “Now, Bran.”
“I can’t—”
“You don’t have a choice,” Sylvie said. “It’s put-up-or-shut-up time. You claim you’re staying human to atone for your mistakes—for letting Love be abused. Prove it. Get out of here and go fix things.
“You say you love Dunne, that you’re not using him as a shield. Prove it. He’s up there, about to set off the end times if Zeus doesn’t devour him first. Rescue yourself. Save him.”
Her hand wound around his wrist, his blood dampening the soft skin under her digging fingernails. His mouth was drawn with pain.
She shook him. “Bran, dammit. Do it. You say you love the life you’ve built. Prove it. You know what’s happening up there. What the gods will do to the earth. You can stop it, just by getting out of here. Except you’re too passive, too frightened, too selfish to try. . . .”
He shook his head. “I can’t!” She shook again, and the painting’s edge hit his lip, raised a bloody line that he licked away, eyes numbed and blank.
“Dunne . . . Kevin could be dying. His immortal shell cracked by Zeus, all that power drawn out and dispersed. I bet that hurts like hell. It makes me sick to think about it, and I barely know him. How does it make you, his lover, feel?”
“Shut up!” He flung her back, not with his hands, which kept the painting clutched tight, but with power. Sylvie landed on her tailbone, whooped for air, and just as she caught it, looked at Bran and lost her breath again.
The painting was gone. Absorbed. His bare chest gaped, a bloody mass of pulled-out bone and flesh; his flayed heart throbbed once, twice, effort-laden beats that spilled blood and paint over the rest of his skin like it was a canvas. He sobbed; his fingers sank into his own chest and touched that faltering heart.
“Oh God,” Sylvie said, lunging forward to stop him from worsening the damage. She caught his bloody wrists, and they stood close, his breath sobbing and hot against her skin. The wound closed slowly, ribs pulling in, heart steadying, and then—He arched back in her arms.
His skin flashed gold, glowing with light; his veins darkened beneath the flesh and spread across his body like ink, drawing by-now-familiar shapes: loops, lines, and Greek letters last seen on the floor of a subway station. Bran’s oubliette spell. Marked in agonized flesh and blood. She leaned into him, closed her eyes against the heat and light The sudden displacement was as dizzying and as distressing as a plane’s plummeting.
His moans choked off in a gurgle, as if his mouth had filled with water, and Sylvie drowned after him. If the first oubliette journey had been a black hole, this one was a riptide, bubbles bursting along her skin, her breath gone, lungs crying out. Her hands spasmed on his shoulders, slipped free, and she fell, gasping, against a wall.
She opened her eyes to Bran’s screaming, but couldn’t find him, blind to anything but the light. Fort Knox, she thought muzzily, it’s all gold—Then Bran cried out again, and Sylvie found him, tangled in gold, like predatory vines, crawling under his skin, matching the oubliette patterns, devouring him.
It was his power, she realized. Power trying to pour itself into a human form. But human flesh couldn’t store it—it split and gave it back into the oubliette in a spray of blood and misty gold. Sylvie grabbed Bran’s shoulder, and said, “Get us out!”
“Wh-where?” His eyes were wild and black with pain.
“Anywhere! It doesn’t matter.” Blood spattered her arm where the power touched him, touched her, burning hot, raising blisters, and she said, “Hurr—”
The world blurred, gold gave way to darkness, and just as Sylvie took in a shuddering breath, a slap of salt water hit her squarely in the face.
The world was water, a tumult of oddly salty rain as if a hurricane had swept inland, bringing the ocean with it; she was sprawled in water, soaked to the skin, water lapping up around her hips, and beneath all that, the solid sense of concrete. Not a beach in a storm, then.
Lightning whited the sky, left livid purple afterimages and the brief glimpse of a landscape in her eyes. Bran choked nearby, and she fumbled over. Of course, he’d be facedown in the water. He was nothing but trouble. She dragged him up against her. “Where are we?” she shouted over the storm. Thunder obliterated any answer he could have made; the rain slashed sideways, welting her bare skin at hands and cheek. There were ice crystals at the heart of the drops, rain turning to hail. Another flash of lightning, and Sylvie caught a glimpse of a wall nearby.