by Anna Windsor
“Oh,” Andy said from somewhere nearby. “Um, sorry.”
Bela coughed and snorted out water as Camille helped her get to her feet. Bela’s knees were shaking. She heard herself swearing. A lot. And the wind was picking up again, with a totally different flavor. It was focused completely on Bela.
This time, Andy said, “Uh-oh.”
Bela shook herself free from Camille’s grip. “Andy, Camille—wait for me by the stone fence. This might take a second.”
“Not.” Andy shook her head, sending droplets raining down from her ears and cheeks. She jogged to Bela and took her hand. “If you go down, I’m going with you.”
Camille didn’t answer, but she didn’t head for the fence, either.
The pressure against Bela’s face and ears felt a lot like being fired off the Empire State Building by some giant slingshot. Her heart pounded, but more from anxiety than fear or anger. She had so few opportunities with Dio. Would this be a good one or a disaster?
I might as well say yes to joining your quad, she had told Bela after spending two hours trying to kill Bela out in Motherhouse Greece’s stone fighting arena. If I’m not fighting with you, I’ll spend all my time thinking about fighting against you. That’s not good for me or you or the Sisterhood. And neither is staying here when we’re so short on Sibyls.
Dio’s wind blew Andy dry and almost knocked Camille off her feet. Bela had to use a big dose of earth power to stay on her feet against the incredible force Dio was exerting as she stormed forward.
“You saved me.” Dio stopped in front of Bela, her blond hair free of its usual clasp and standing almost straight up in the swirling wind. Dio’s rage flowed through each word, through the air itself, into the earth, making Bela’s teeth rattle. It was all she could do to hold her ground, and if she hadn’t been gripping Andy’s hand, she might have blown even that simple goal.
Dio’s gray eyes snapped like they were full of lightning, and once more, thunder rumbled in the clear night sky. “You—you saved me.”
“Yeah, she did,” Andy shouted over the rush of air. “Saying thank you might be appropriate!”
“Piss off!” Dio roared, and it sounded like a brand-new tornado touching ground.
Bela took a wider stance and yelled, “I did what I could,” knowing Andy and Dio and Camille understood that she wasn’t talking about the moment in the fight when she’d kept the Rakshasa from choking Dio.
For a few seconds, stretching from yesterday into eternity, Dio just glared at Bela and let the wind blow.
Bela stood fast, and Andy and Camille gave no ground beside her.
The roar of the air died back enough for Dio’s next words to sound less lethal. “You’re good with that sword, and with the saw-toothed blade you used to carry.” Tears glistened in the gray depths of her furious eyes. “You’re a master. A genius.”
Bela dismissed that with a shake of her head. “I’m not a genius at anything, Dio.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Andy said, her voice nothing but a grumble against the still-storming wind.
“Bitch,” Dio said, the air losing force by the second, and her voice turning ragged, almost overcontrolled. “Why the hell couldn’t you have saved my sister?”
Bela felt the lance of pain like a knife thrust in her chest. “I don’t know.”
Andy wanted to say more, Bela knew. Andy had been there when Devin died, but so out of control with her new water power that she was as much hindrance as help. Bela squeezed Andy’s fingers, hoping she understood.
Let it go. Leave it alone.
Water flowed down Andy’s arm, splattering against the wind-swept ground as Dio finally released her air assault.
“You were standing there when my sister died.” Dio started off loud, but her voice dropped as she spent her venom. Her normally bright eyes had gone completely blank. “Then you let some ass-wiping demon carry her back to Motherhouse Greece. Thanks for that, Bela.”
That was too much for Andy, who let go of Bela’s hand and slapped Dio with a fistful of water, plastering Dio’s hair to her face and shoulders. “Jake Lowell is not just some random stranger. He’s special, and he’s married to a Sibyl now—and he treated your sister with respect. We didn’t have fighters to spare for an honor escort. A lot of good OCU officers didn’t even get funerals until after the crisis passed.”
Andy’s voice wavered on that last sentence, and she sprayed a little more water.
“For the sake of the Goddess, Dio, the Legion was busting our balls all over New York.” Bela wiped water off her own cheeks, aware that Dio hadn’t been in that fight. “We were getting slaughtered, like we almost got slaughtered tonight.”
The words fell into the now-still air. Shame flickered across Dio’s beautiful face.
“Bela saved you,” Camille said in a cramped tone. “That would be a good thing to remember, how it feels to almost die and get saved by your sister Sibyl. It doesn’t always work that way. It can’t, not with what we fight on these streets every day.”
Bela couldn’t even look at Camille, because she knew what she’d see.
A younger version of the woman, deep in the trail section of Van Cortlandt Park, huddled over the burned, dead form of her triad’s air Sibyl, killed in a Legion ambush. Camille had beaten back a demon horde almost single-handedly, just to protect the body. It had taken Bela almost an hour to pry Camille’s fingers away from the corpse and get them both out of that park.
“Loss never gets any smaller, especially if you feed it,” Andy told Dio, or maybe it was Camille—or maybe it was all of them. “And don’t tell me I don’t know how it feels.”
Dio’s wind energy started to kick up, but Bela contained it without too much effort. Dio wasn’t fighting that hard anymore. Bela had a sensation like a shift in the weather as Dio hesitated, then let the air stop moving.
Shouts got their attention, and a group of Sibyls in face masks raced across the grass toward them, fire Sibyl weapon flaming.
Andy waved to them, shouting that the battle was over.
A minute or so later, the lead Sibyl in the approaching triad retrieved Bela’s sword from the ground and pressed the hilt into her hand. She thought it was Sheila Gray, the spook-calm earth Sibyl of the East Ranger triad. With the shortage of fighters, they had been pulling north to cover the Bronx more nights than not.
As Bela sheathed her hot, wet blade, she saw the burning sword the group’s fire Sibyl was carrying. Short hilt. Massive blade with rune-like etchings of dying people glowing along its length. Yep. It was the East Ranger Group. Maggie Cregan was the only Sibyl in history to fight with an execution sword. It had belonged to an ancestor—one of Ireland’s most notorious hang-ladies. Maggie’s sword gradually stopped glowing as she absorbed her fire energy, and she pulled off her face mask to reveal her short red hair. Even in the dead of night, her strange pale green eyes burned with a deadly, psychotic light most people would find very, very disturbing. As it was, Bela felt a flash of envy over Maggie’s fire power, wishing Camille could access just a fraction of that energy reliably when they needed it.
“Think that was overkill with the tornados?” Camille was asking Dio as she dusted away the burned remains of her own face mask and patted out several smoking holes in her leathers. “Two of them?”
“I broke them up before they took out any buildings,” called Karin Maros, the East Ranger triad’s friendly air Sibyl. “It’s all good.”
“You need to shut up.” Dio shook her face mask at Camille. “The frigging ashes got dispersed, didn’t they?”
“Did you guys see any columns of blue flame?” Andy had her face mask off, and she was turning in circles, her wet hair spraying water as she scanned their little corner of Central Park.
The East Ranger group shook their heads. “Nothing like that,” Sheila Gray said as she carefully unzipped her face mask and took it off to reveal her long ink-black hair, pulled into a pristine ponytail. “Just the tornados with ashes in the
center.”
Bela gave a quick explanation of Rakshasa and the battle, and saw Sheila’s face change from interested to worried as she contemplated a new onslaught of demons in New York City. Dio explained about the killing process.
“The Mothers already know,” Camille told Maggie. “They’re at our place, helping that detective who got sliced down in DUMBO.”
“I thought more demons were going to pop out of the air, but the blue fire columns went away.” Andy holstered her dart gun, the set of her mouth grim and very officer-like. “I think those fuckers were playing with us. Just testing us to see what we’ve got, how we fight.”
“How fast it took help to arrive?” Sheila suggested, and Bela had the uncomfortable sense that she was correct.
“I guess we just got measured.” Bela wished she could sit down. Her knees felt like rubber.
“Not good,” Andy grumbled, still staring out at the park like she expected the Rakshasa to come back any second. The East Ranger group was studying Andy more than the trees, and Bela knew they couldn’t help themselves. The world’s only fighting water Sibyl was a great curiosity to anyone who didn’t know her. And even lots of people who did.
A few minutes later, Sheila and her triad said their goodbyes and headed back to the streets. As they faded from view, Bela leaned against Camille for support.
“Did anybody see a ghost?” She pushed her singed, damp, matted hair out of her face with one trembling hand and used her fingers to confirm that she had no eyebrows. “It looked kind of like a soldier, only made out of golden light, and I drew some energy from it.”
By morning, her eyebrows would be close to regrown—but damn, she hated it when her face got fried. The blisters only lasted an hour or two, but they burned like a bitch for the first few minutes.
Andy, Dio, and Camille all stared at her.
“Nooooo,” Andy said. “No ghosts, Bela.” Then, “Dio, I think you rattled her brain with all that wind. We’d better get her back to the brownstone and call headquarters to ask the West Ranger triad to finish patrol.”
“It wasn’t my wind that scrambled her good sense.” Dio didn’t look at Bela as she retrieved her throwing knives and looped them into her belt. “Her brain was mush a long time before I met her.”
“The ghost, or the apparition … it was there.” Bela used her palms to soothe her burning face with earth energy. “The demon saw it, so it had to have energy. That’s why I’m still alive.”
Camille threaded her arm around Bela’s waist and turned her toward home. “I’m—I’m really sorry I couldn’t find my fire.”
Bela patted Camille’s hand. “You beheaded the thing and saved my butt. You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“No kidding.” Andy got on Bela’s other side and helped steady her and keep her torn leathers from falling off as they started out of the park. “That was one hell of a chop. Gross as shit, too.”
Dio didn’t come to help out and didn’t offer Camille any comfort. She walked behind them, the way brooms tended to do. After a few moments, she said, “If you really saw a ghost, maybe it was Duncan Sharp.”
Bela stopped walking.
Anger hit her first, a hot wash of it, just before an equally cold wash of dread. She yanked her arms free from Andy and Camille, and gave serious thought to drawing her sword on Dio.
Get a grip, whispered the long-lost voices of Nori and Devin. She’s yours. Your sister Sibyl. He’s just a man, and a stranger.
Bela’s lips curled back from her teeth. Battle rage was rising in her again, hot and powerful and demanding, but she couldn’t get a fix on what or whom she wanted to attack, or even why. The voices from her past, for being so almighty rational? Dio, for bringing up such a terrible possibility?
Herself, for bringing this quad together?
“Dio, you’re a bitch.” Andy tried to tug Bela forward with Camille helping, but Bela sank her earth energy into the grass and didn’t move. “She’s just a bitch, Bela. Don’t listen to her.”
“Hey, I’m not being a shithead.” Dio caught up with them and faced Bela. “Think about it. We just fought one Rakshasa, smaller than the ones we fought in DUMBO—and not as strong as those demons were. Then there’s the fact that other Rakshasa seemed to be escorting it, but they didn’t stay and help it finish the job.” She pointed toward the brownstone. “The creature came from that direction, and Bela, you said you saw a ghost that helped you. A ghost in uniform—maybe like a police officer, or whatever’s left of a person’s soul after they turn into a cat-demon.”
Bela’s mind was going slowly numb.
That made a little too much sense to suit her.
“Please don’t be right,” she whispered, hugging herself. “He seems like a strong man. A good man. I don’t want to think of him like—”
The memory of the demon’s head hitting her thigh made bile surge up her throat. Her wet skin got clammy, and she was shaking from more than fatigue now.
Andy got busy offering a few more opinions about Dio’s lineage for talking so casually about a police officer’s death, but Camille’s expression turned nervous and she stared at her feet. “Maybe the Mothers couldn’t save him,” she said, sounding worried and sad.
Andy stopped her recitation. “The Mothers,” she repeated. “Oh. God.” In the bright moonlight, Bela saw all the color drain out of Andy’s face. “How would he have gotten away from them? There’s no way, unless—”
“Shit!” Dio’s shout was followed by a blast of wind as she took off toward the brownstone, sweeping past Bela and Andy and Camille like they were statues.
Camille was the next to move, and Bela found herself running, too, breathless again, teeth chattering, and Andy holding tight to her hand.
(9)
Duncan dreamed he was holding off an ugly-ass monster, keeping himself between the beautiful woman he wanted to touch and one of the psychotic cat-bastards who’d killed John.
Rakshasa, John’s voice told him, but Duncan couldn’t begin to grasp that word.
He had known his angel was in trouble, and he’d gone to her, but he couldn’t say how he’d pulled any of that off.
He thought his heart was beating, hard and fast, but his body didn’t seem to be all the way in the fight. He felt … floaty. Then his whole head seemed to catch fire, and his arms, and his neck and chest. Damn. It was all he could do to stay on his feet. Like the desert. Just like the desert under too much sun to breathe, but this was Central Park, and it was dark, and he was made out of light instead of flesh and blood, and he was wearing a chain around his neck that seemed to weigh about six hundred pounds.
You’re losing it, Sharp.
Death was real to him now, a monster like the cat-thing, black and stretching everywhere like a frigid Afghan night. It was with him. Right beside him, and it wanted him.
Was he cashing it in, right this very second?
Was he nothing but a ghost?
The death-monster slid toward him, blocking New York City from his view.
Duncan held back a shout of pain—and she saw him. His angel. She looked up at him with those beautiful dark eyes, and she knew he was there, trying to help her.
That kept him upright. Helped him ignore the death-monster and even shove it back a few feet.
He touched her hair, so soft, and he willed her to be okay, tried to give her a dose of whatever it was she’d been giving him to make him stronger.
Grab that sword, Angel.
Cut that furry fucker before it cuts you.
The monster took a swipe at him.
Missed.
And his angel dragged her blade off the pavement.
Yes!
She lifted it, swung her arm back, and—
The park exploded into fire and wind and water and nothing. Nothing but long, velvety darkness.
Duncan drifted in that nothing space for a while, then he thought he heard women talking.
Sounding distressed—worried, or maybe upset?
Yeah, sure. John Cole laughed at him. You’re a sinner, Duncan, but you’d have to be a good sinner to get that many women upset over your sorry ass.
“Ve’re fine,” said a craggy, ancient voice with a Russian accent. “He’s holding on, but he did not leave this bed. Better, a bit, ve think, but novhere near getting up and joining you in battle.”
Duncan tried to shake himself loose from the dark claws of sleep that dug into his mind, his joints, his muscles.
No luck.
He never thought a pair of eyelids could weigh as much as boxcars, but damn, his were heavy. And his arm hurt. And the rest of him hurt, too.
The sleep-claws pierced him all over again, and he didn’t hear anything else for a while.
He woke to a little pinch on his arm, like somebody poked him with a needle to take blood. Then a sexy female voice said, “You’re alive.”
He heard the relief, felt it almost as plainly as his own heartbeat. The air around him seemed calm, but there was a power to it, and he took a deep breath.
Almonds and fresh berries, just a hint of it. Perfect.
“I’m staying here with you now, until you wake up.” Soft lips pressed against his forehead, then went away, and he wanted them back. “No way am I going through that bunch of worry again.”
A little while later, he heard the hum of machinery and soft, distant singing. Something he recognized. It was a haunting, melancholy tune he’d learned from some old women in the Afghan desert. They had picked it up from Russian soldiers during the invasion years before.
Cossack’s lullaby, John reminded him, then translated a verse, to help Duncan call it into his conscious mind.
I will die from longing, I will wait inconsolably,
I will pray the whole day long,
And at night I’ll tell fortunes.
I will think that you are in trouble,
Far away in a foreign land.
John went quiet.