by Anna Windsor
With each gentle swipe, she could see more of his tanned face, from the strong line of his jaw to the corners of his mouth. The guy probably had a drop-dead grin to go with that thick brown hair, which would be curly if he hadn’t cut it so short. She imagined Duncan Sharp awake again, fit and well. If that gorgeous face could relax, it might be boyish.
Her own breathing slowed more, falling into rhythm with his as she bathed away what she could of his pain and damage. She glanced at his slash wounds, which were still behaving for the moment, with the ancient coin resting beside them on its golden chain. Bela knew better than to toy with ancient things, so she left the coin where it lay and moved on to bathing the bulging muscles of the detective’s shoulders and chest.
He had big, strong hands, which she lifted as far as the metal cuffs would allow, letting them rest on his rock-hard belly at the top of the sheet covering him at the waist. She was careful not to damage the cast Andy and Dio had crafted to support the broken bone in his right forearm.
There.
Now he looked more comfortable.
And, damnit, even more handsome than he had three minutes ago.
Bela stared into his face, so close at the angle she had taken to clean him up, squeezing the rag in her fingers, trying to decide if she was finished.
She couldn’t make up her mind.
She couldn’t even move.
From over her head, on the main floor of the brownstone, came the distinct and powerful shifting of elemental energy that let Bela know the ancient channels of communication and transportation had been opened. Her living room was probably filling up with Mothers, stepping through the projective mirrors used to connect the brownstone and every Sibyl dwelling to the Motherhouses and each other.
Just what she needed.
A buttload of cranky old women powerful enough to shake, burn, and blow down New York City, all come to monkey with this man’s health—and probably with her quad before they departed.
Bela was grateful for their help. It was lovely that they were coming. And kind. And she really wanted to scream now.
She went back to bathing Duncan Sharp’s face and neck.
It had been a long day and night on the heels of a damned endless month. She had spent the last four weeks trying to bind together a fighting group that just wouldn’t—or couldn’t—mesh yet. They had taken on extra patrols to build experience with each other, but so far the best they could muster was a few semi-competent battles. The rest of the time, they jumped and banged and rattled against each other like popcorn in a hot pan. At least down here on the brownstone’s basement floor, with her bedroom, the long, dark, and cool hallway to the lab, the big lab space itself, and the little treatment room contained in the corner, Bela could feel settled and calm, and a little bit at home. Even if she was downtown.
Bela had never thought she’d live in the city. Way too prissy for a Bronx girl. But hey, when your best frenemy gifts you the most killer brownstone in Manhattan, you don’t say, Ew, no, thanks, that’s too poof-ass for my blood.
“You have a temporary breakdown and paint the walls a heinous yellow,” she muttered to the sleeping detective as she forced herself to stand up and lower the washrag. “Then you load the place up with an injured detective and a full complement of Sibyl Mothers. Welcome to my house, Duncan Sharp.”
As if to answer her, the detective opened his eyes.
Oh.
Bela’s breath stilled in her throat.
Her quad’s growing pains, the Mothers, and even the insane yellow walls faded into distant regions of her mind.
Oh, my.
Gray-blue was all she could see now, as clear and startling as a winter sky at dawn.
Those eyes were … beautiful. A little wild. Definitely different. Bela tried to jumpstart her breathing but couldn’t pull off even a gasp.
It wasn’t just the color. It was the depth—a dark, flickering intensity like shadows on crystal. He had a tired, haunted sadness about him that went beyond battles and wounds. How far would a man have to travel, and how much trouble would he have to know, to get power like that in his gaze?
Duncan Sharp’s stare brushed her cheek like fingertips, moving slowly down to her chin, and lower, to her neck. Shock mingled with wonder and other emotions she couldn’t begin to identify as he focused on her, seemed to take her in—and grinned.
Bela managed to get a little air, but not much.
Boyish, just like she’d thought. Charming and endearing would be good words, too. Heat crept across her shoulders and up her neck as she smiled back at him.
“You saved my life,” he whispered, so low and deep she felt it all over her body. Even in those four words, she got a taste of raw Southern male.
It took a lot of effort to make her mouth work, but Bela stammered, “We—we’re trying, Detective Sharp.”
“It’s Duncan.” The grin faded. He closed his amazing eyes for a second, then opened them long enough to add, “You’re so damned gorgeous I’m gonna touch you to make sure you’re real.”
The padded cuffs holding his good wrist clinked as he reached toward her and ran out of chain. His attention shifted to the cuffs, and he jerked against them again before trying to move his casted arm.
“Careful.” Bela rested her palm on the warm skin of his wrist, still feeling the heat of his half-delirious compliment. He had no idea where he was, who she was—he wasn’t even asking why he wasn’t in a hospital, if he realized he wasn’t. He probably wouldn’t remember a word of this tomorrow—but she would. “We’ve got you restrained as a precaution.”
There was that grin again, and a devilish sparkle in his winter-gray eyes. “Angel, you can tie me up anytime.”
The cuffs clinked again.
Angel.
Yeah. He was delirious, for sure, but that accent was sweet enough to eat, and those eyes had to be the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
They pinned her, held her totally still as he grabbed the metal arms of his bed and lifted himself, higher, higher, until his lips—his lips—Goddess, he was kissing her, and she was letting him.
So quick.
So soft.
Like a daydream, one she should jerk herself out of and come to her senses, but really, she’d rather stay right where she was, with his lips brushing hers, sampling her like she was some sort of exotic wine. Her heart jumped and squeezed like he had her in an endless clench, like he might just break free of his cuffs and pull her down with him, and damn, she’d probably let him do that, too.
“You are real,” he whispered against her mouth.
Bela felt enough heat in her face to wonder if Mother Keara was right, that she was secretly a fire Sibyl ready to break out in roaring, rolling flames. When he lowered himself back to his pillow, she couldn’t move, couldn’t stop looking at him, couldn’t stop staring into the endless, intriguing depths of his eyes.
And that’s when those beautiful eyes started to change.
(5)
It was just a flicker at first.
A quick light-to-dark.
Bela drew back her hand from his wrist as his pulse accelerated. “Duncan?”
He said nothing. The flicker happened again, and she backed off in a hurry, a few feet from the bed.
“Detective Sharp.” Bela made herself sound harder, to see if she could get his attention. “Can you hear me?”
Duncan blinked but stared at the yellow wall over Bela’s shoulder. He had gray eyes again, then a blink, and—black eyes.
Gray again.
Then black.
Then gray.
“Mother Keara,” Bela called, too freaked to add any earth force to her volume as her own heart started thumping hard enough to crack her ribs.
Duncan looked confused. Then upset. Then pissed off.
Then …
Then he seemed to go away altogether.
His eyes went night-black and wide, and the angles and lines of his face shifted to the profile of a completel
y different man. Or creature. Bela was still staring, even though she was backing up fast and raising a hefty shield of earth power between herself and whatever was lying in that hospital bed.
Duncan Sharp, or the blend of positive and negative energies he had become, let out a distinctly inhuman growl.
The fine hairs along the back of Bela’s neck prickled.
“The Unrighteous will come,” he whispered in a voice that sounded like something straight out of Satan’s realm. “They’ll kill you,” the Lucifer voice said, like he wanted to be sure she heard him.
“Shit.” Bela was in the treatment room’s doorway now, breathing in fast, jagged gulps. The air seemed colder than it should be. Poisonous green-black energy bubbled out of Duncan’s slash wounds, exploding against the elemental locks until the room trembled.
“Mother Keara!” Bela yelled, this time putting some punch in it. “Down here, now!”
Where the hell was her sword?
Had she left it upstairs when they got back?
Shit, shit, shit!
Duncan Sharp lurched upward, rattling against the cuffs on all four limbs. “Run!” he bellowed, and Bela wouldn’t have been surprised to see his head start to spin around. “Bug out, soldier, now, now, now!”
She raised both arms and hurled enough earth energy into that treatment room to crush Duncan Sharp to bits of blood and rubble.
It didn’t faze him.
He was still coming off the bed.
The chains on the handcuffs strained. A few links bent apart.
Then a wall of earth, fire, air, and water power shoved Bela sideways and exploded into the space, surrounding the flailing man and mashing him flat against his pillows.
He lay there, mouth open, eyes wide and flickering from gray to black.
Bela glanced to her left to see Mother Keara standing next to little Mother Yana from Russia and tall, graceful Mother Anemone from Greece. On Bela’s right, Andy was spouting gouts of water as she directed her elemental energies, and Dio and Camille were getting a shower as they held Andy’s hands to keep her steady.
The Mothers kept up their steady stream of power until Duncan Sharp, or whatever was trying to act through his battered flesh and bones, gave up and collapsed.
Less than five seconds later, he lapsed into a deep, unconscious sleep, and the poisoned energy from his wounds flickered away into nothing. The gold coin around his neck glittered in the light of the treatment room, looking for all the world like a metallic cap, sealing off whatever was trying to break out of his essence and take over the brownstone.
Bela wasn’t certain she was still breathing. She had to push against her own chest to make sure she was still standing there, in her own basement, in her own laboratory.
Yellow. Check.
Sand tones. Check.
Creamy brown background. Check.
Crabby Mothers, wet water Sibyl, paralyzed fire Sibyl, prickly air Sibyl—check, check, check, and check.
“Bet that woke the new neighbor,” Andy said as she drew back the last waves of her water power and Dio and Camille turned her loose. “Good evening, Mrs. Knight. How do you like your new place? Oh, never mind the little satanic possession drama in the basement next door. We have everything under total control.” She scrubbed a dripping hand across her mouth. “Fuck me. Did he just turn into one of those things we fought in DUMBO?”
The older Mothers moved past Bela and the rest of her quad to examine the sleeping patient. Bela’s senses told her that his body, at least, was holding its own. Her mind ricocheted between the Duncan who’d woken, spoken to her, and kissed her—and the disturbed, different Duncan who had shouted at her and almost torn the handcuffs and bed apart.
Had they already failed him? Was Duncan Sharp transforming into something inhuman? Something they would have to exterminate for everyone’s safety? Bela’s insides started to ache. She wasn’t sure she could do that, not after he’d taken on those demons and fought so hard to live. He had a strength about him, physical and spiritual, that pulled at her.
After a few seconds, Mother Keara stood and pronounced, “He’s still human.”
Relief brushed Bela like a feather to the heart, and she put her hand on her chest.
Mother Keara conferred briefly with Mother Yana and Mother Anemone.
“This will take some time,” Mother Anemone said in her lyrical, breezy voice as she rolled up the delicate sleeves of her blue robes. “We’ll have to work in shifts this morning, and likely most of the day and night.”
“Go.” Mother Yana’s tone was distracted as she wove more earth energy into the elemental locks securing Duncan Sharp. “The day vill pass fast enough, and you have patrol again come dark, no?”
“No,” Camille said, then, “I mean, yes. We do.”
“Ve vill call you vhen ve need you, Andrea, to help vith the healing,” Mother Yana told Andy. She held both bony hands over the detective’s chest, likely keeping his pulse steady. “Ve vill try not to pull you from your fighting duties, but it may be necessary.”
For a moment, Andy looked like she wanted to argue, then seemed to regain her senses. She caught Camille’s hand, and the two of them started for the lab door, dripping a trail of water behind them.
Dio shifted her weight, then cut Bela a quick glance. Her stormy eyes were noncommittal, but she managed to mumble, “We made you a sandwich. Well, Andy made you a sandwich.” She paused and made a face, because Andy and sandwiches … well, Andy liked to be creative, and the results weren’t always palatable. “While she was steaming the sprouts and cabbage, I dug through the archives to figure out what the hell we’re dealing with. So, eat—if you can swallow rye and sprouts and cabbage at the same time. Go to bed. We’ll talk when we go on patrol.”
Bela started to thank Dio, but Dio clamped her mouth shut like she’d said too much and took off, moving with an air Sibyl’s speed and grace.
Had Dio just tried to be nice?
A tiny throb of pain touched Bela’s temples. Headache. That happened when she got too stressed and confused. She rubbed her face just above her eyes and decided that last bit about Dio and niceness had been overly optimistic. Or maybe delusional.
She yawned.
Sleep would definitely be good right about now, sandwich or no.
Bela glanced into the treatment room again, but she couldn’t see Duncan Sharp for the swarm of Mothers and curtains of elemental energy blocking her view. Disappointment made her fingers twitch. Even though he had sort of shifted into something weird and screeched at her in a devil voice, she really wanted one more glimpse of his face before she crammed down whatever bizarre sandwich combination Andy had constructed, then crashed.
How sick was that?
My world is FUBAR. Hell, maybe it’s just me—I’m FUBAR.
Wasn’t that the military and cop term for “fucked up beyond all recognition”?
“FUBAR,” she said out loud as she started for the door, and the word seemed to bounce against the tables full of shining silver instruments filling the main section of her research space.
(6)
FUBAR.
That sounded like a woman’s voice, and Duncan liked it even though it had to be a cooked-brain hallucination. He could use a good woman. A strong woman who could drive away the darkness that hunted him like Satan on safari whenever he tried to dream.
Did women like that even exist—and if they did, why would they consider a banged-up piece of meat like him?
Duncan’s muscles screamed and burned as he trudged across the sand, which was more rock and flint than anything else. Two dead. Radios shot to hell. He would have carried Johnston and Simms back with him, but he knew he’d never make it, so he’d recorded the spot on his map, and now he was trying to get home. Such as it was. Bunch of shacks and tents in the middle of nowhere—but they’d go back for Johnston and Simms. A sun as big as five planets hammered him with each step, turning his already tanned skin into some new grade of leather. The cuts on
his neck from the IED explosion burned like somebody had poured acid on his face.
Second-degree burns. Almost lost part of my nose and some of my fingers.
“Don’t forget the cough for a year, after sucking down all this dust,” he mumbled, hating the parched burn in his throat, and the fact that he couldn’t stop taking this walk even though he had survived it years ago. “Why does everything always come back to this place?”
“Because we never really left Afghanistan,” John Cole said, and Duncan realized his best friend was beside him and matching him step for step, across the endless desert. “Not completely.”
Duncan glanced at John, who had short hair instead of long. He was wearing his best dress uniform, ribbons and all, pressed and perfect, just like all his buddies who went home in bags—after the Dover Military Mortuary cleaned them up spotless for that last ride home.
“Can’t hide, sinner,” John said with a wry smile, putting a little tune to the words.
“Fuck, John.” Duncan kept walking, because he always kept walking, because if he stopped, he’d fall down and fry under the merciless Afghan sun, or get chewed to pieces by a nasty bunch of camel spiders. “You’re dead.”
John was quiet for a few strides, then said, “Technically.”
Duncan squinted at the baked brown ground, blinded by the yellow-gray afternoon light. If he was back in camp—and he wondered if he’d ever get back—a screwdriver would be so hot it would scald his palm if he touched it.
But … that was then, wasn’t it?
That was back in the war, after one of more than a dozen roadside bombs went off and blew two jeeps all to hell.
And this was a dream.
Maybe … a new war? One he didn’t even understand yet.
Duncan wondered if John’s body would be patched up and sent home to Georgia. Would his friend get the fabled flag-draped casket treatment, all these years after they made it out of the damned desert that killed a part of both of them?