Captive Spirit

by Anna Windsor

Duncan could have listened to the woman sing forever. He knew it was her. The same woman who’d just kissed his forehead—the angel who kept drifting through his dreams.

  Maybe if he dreamed about her hard enough, he’d make her real.

  (10)

  Bela stayed with Duncan the rest of that night, and all the next day and night, too, taking breaks only when the Mothers worked with him. She wasn’t sure why she felt so compelled to do that, except that she was positive he had saved her life in Central Park.

  How—now that was a question, but she intended to find out. As carefully as possible, she took small blood samples every few hours, some skin samples, and very, very carefully, some scrapings from his slash wounds. She used them to run standard medical tests, but also Sibyl studies to examine his blood history and find out if he had any supernatural heritage, paranormal energy profiles, even species DNA tracers.

  “You have a king’s will,” she told him after yet another study came back with nothing but normal human indicators. She traced the outline of his face, lingering on the rough stubble of his jaw as she gave him a light dose of earth energy to make sure he wasn’t hurting. “You win your battles no matter what, no matter how you have to do it, don’t you?”

  He stirred at her touch, at her words, and she wondered if he could hear her.

  In case he could, she gave him a good talking-to about using all that formidable strength to keep fighting his demon infection and wake up.

  Early on the third evening, Mother Keara booted Bela out and told her to spend some time with her quad.

  By the time she changed clothes and made it up the stairs and into the kitchen, Bela was realizing how tired she was, which wasn’t good, with patrol looming again tomorrow night. For a few minutes, she stood in the kitchen next to Andy, feeling the soft buffet of water energy as she crammed down the Gruyère and pine nut sandwich Andy made for her in silence.

  Andy glared at the coffeemaker as if her ferocious stare would speed up its brewing.

  It didn’t.

  Bela swallowed the last of the cheese and pumpernickel. The urge to go back to the basement and check on Duncan nearly overwhelmed her, and she looked at the door to the steps at least five times in thirty seconds.

  “He’s handsome,” Andy said, more to the coffeemaker than Bela. “But now I’m thinking it’s more than that.”

  Bela sighed and burped pine nuts. “He’s a fighter. That’s all. I admire that—plus, I think something else is going on with him, other than the demon infection. An apparition really did save me in Central Park, before Camille beheaded the Rakshasa, and I’m sure it was him.”

  “Duncan Sharp is wounded. He’s sick, and he might die any second.” A few droplets trickled down Andy’s cheeks and necks as she touched the coffeemaker. The water inside it hissed as it finally started to brew, and Bela knew she’d have to buy a new machine soon. Andy blew one up about every two weeks.

  “You think you can heal him,” Andy said. “With your dead triad sisters, you never got that chance.”

  That hit home, and way too hard. Bela rubbed her belly, where the cheese and pine nut paste churned in unpleasant ways. “Ouch.”

  She was surprised she didn’t hear Nori and Devin talking to her, but then, she hadn’t heard them much since she started working with Duncan.

  Andy banged the top of the coffeemaker, which still wasn’t going fast enough to suit her, but her light brown eyes were distant. The green highlights in those eyes were so strong, they could be taken for either color, depending on the lighting.

  “Be careful, Bela. That’s all I’m saying. Saving this man won’t bring Nori and Devin back to you.”

  The warning came out soft. Way too soft for Andy, and Bela knew why.

  “I hear you.” She reached out and squeezed Andy’s wrist.

  Andy nodded and went to get her coffee mug. If she hadn’t moved away so quickly, Bela would have hugged her, and Andy probably would have cried.

  Three years, and Andy was still hurting as badly as Bela over her losses. Maybe even worse—and definitely more than she usually let on to anyone. It was three years ago that Bela had watched the worst ancient demon in history tear apart her OCU patrol partner, Sal Freeman, who had been the captain of the OCU—and Andy’s lover.

  Bela had been the one dispatched to tell Andy he was dead. She’d been forced to see Andy’s face, to stand there helpless while Andy’s soul broke apart from the weight of the grief. After she had knocked Andy out to save New York City from an accidental tidal wave, Bela had carried Andy for miles to get her back to OCU’s townhouse headquarters on the Upper East Side, above the reservoir, cradling her like a wounded child.

  Later that same day, after everyone else had joined the final battle against the Legion, Bela had gone with Andy into the downstairs conference room and stood beside her when she saw Sal’s body. She had held Andy and felt her racking sobs as the medical examiner zipped up what was left of the love of Andy’s life and took him away forever. Then, even after she had lost faith in her own ability to protect anyone she loved, Bela had followed Andy into battle, ready to die to avenge Andy’s pain.

  That was the moment, perhaps, when they both understood that no matter how close Andy was to the Sibyl triad who gave them this brownstone—the women who introduced Andy to the world of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood—Bela and Andy would one day fight together.

  “The living room’s quiet again,” Andy said as she brought her giant mug back to fill it up. Her voice was still weak, and almost whispery. It hurt Bela to hear it. “Mother Yana and Mother Anemone are upstairs resting in Dio’s room. Dio and Camille have some ideas about how to find where the Rakshasa are hiding. I’ll be there in a second.”

  Bela almost had to slap herself to make herself leave the kitchen and let Andy have the time she needed to compose herself. She didn’t want to abandon her closest friend, and, if she admitted the whole truth, she didn’t want to leave the basement door behind, either. But, duty was duty, and they had cat-demons to kill, so she pushed her way through the swinging door into the large, two-section living room.

  Flat, unmoving air surrounded her, oppressing her almost immediately.

  How can it be so damned still in here?

  In the back section of the living room, Bela dropped onto the overstuffed couch beside the huge wooden communications platform that also served as her quad’s work table. She glanced quickly at Camille and Dio. They weren’t wearing leathers, but both of them looked like they were fighting battles in their own minds. They sat in the matching chairs on the opposite side of the big table, each working on papers in front of them without talking.

  How could there be no energy in the room with three, count them, three Sibyls sitting within grabbing distance of each other? Sibyls who were supposed to be part of the same fighting quad.

  It’s like living in a crypt.

  She wanted to go back to the basement and take up her vigil beside Duncan Sharp again. At least down there, she felt … welcome. Bela scrubbed her palms against the knees of her jeans and tried to relax, letting her earth energy fill the void and her earth senses reach out with more force and precision.

  Nope.

  Nothing in the room other than warm bodies and heartbeats. The sets of wind chimes, designed to carry Sibyl communications and react to elemental energy, hung still and silent from the ceiling and doorways. No jingling. No tinkling. Bela couldn’t detect even a hint of wind, ash, soot, or smoke, and she needed something, damn it, to keep her mind off Duncan Sharp.

  She scooted around on the overstuffed couch and did her best to ignore the odd elemental stillness in the room. No matter what position she cramped herself into, she couldn’t get comfortable on the soft cushions. She might as well have tried to balance on a pile of camel-colored marshmallows.

  Dio, her nails and hair impeccably clean and neat as always, had a map of Manhattan on the table in front of her. Her khaki slacks and white blouse were pressed to perfection, an
d even the map she was working on had no smudges or errant lines. The dozen projective mirrors hanging at intervals on the walls behind her seemed to magnify her freaky neatness, just like they highlighted the absence of smoke and fire in the air around Camille.

  Camille, dressed in jeans and a cream-colored tunic, had a map, too. She was using her pencil to add a few dots in the center. Bela watched her work, shifting on her stack of pillows again.

  This place, this whole brownstone, it just wasn’t right.

  Her quad was more jeans and sandwiches than silk and caviar. Maybe that was part of the problem. As soon as possible, she was junking this fluffy high-end crap for some leather furniture, metal accents, hardwood floors—yeah. Attractive, durable, and easy to clean.

  Andy banged through the swinging kitchen door on Bela’s left gripping a notebook, a folder, a pen, and a coffee mug that rivaled the size of a small beer keg. She dripped water from both elbows. Droplets splattered on her torn, damp jeans, her hole-ravaged NYC T-shirt, and the plush carpet.

  Bela let out a breath at the fresh rush of elemental power and normalcy Andy brought with her, then thought better of the hardwood idea. With the world’s only fighting water Sibyl in the house, she should probably go with tile. Hardwood would never last.

  Andy put down her massive mug, folder, and writing utensils on the gigantic oak platform before she flopped into the last of the matching chairs arranged in a circle around the big table. She rubbed both hands across her freckled cheeks. “Do we have a search plan yet?”

  Dio slid her map forward. “Camille’s talked to all the triads in the city, and nobody’s sensed any of that sour-feeling Rakshasa energy outright.” She had outlined most of Manhattan, then sketched grid lines over the lower portion of the borough. There were question marks on parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn, and one mark on the east side of Staten Island. Dio pointed to the symbols. “Some disturbances in normal patterns were picked up here, here, and here outside of Manhattan, but the elemental energy in this borough is the most stirred up and dense.”

  Andy took a big swig of coffee, then made a note and asked, “Isn’t it always that way?”

  “Yes, but this is more than usual.” Camille tugged at her hair, then stopped herself, pushed her own map aside, and used Dio’s to show Andy and Bela the biggest trouble spots. “Almost like somebody’s trying to keep up some shields against paranormal energy, broader and more organized than the Vodoun mambos and Wiccans and Pagans can pull off. Sheila’s Rangers tracked the flame-form Rakshasa who ran away from our fight, and they lost the scent and feel of them right around here, in Midtown West.”

  Dio’s heaviest grid lines covered Times Square, Midtown East, Midtown West, Chelsea, Murray Hill, and Gramercy. “The shielding comes and goes through here, the hottest areas. I think if we concentrate on these sections, we’ll find something.”

  “The OCU has doubled patrols in those sectors day and night.” Andy pushed her mug away from her on the table, and Bela realized she’d already slammed down half its contents. “The OCU also has contacts digging through financial records, like you suggested. If we can’t find the kitties right away, maybe we can hunt down whoever is paying them. I got a copy of the file on the woman who got murdered the night we rescued Duncan Sharp.” She pushed her folder forward and flipped it open to reveal photographs and police reports.

  Bela leaned toward the table, and her stomach lurched at the top photo—a naked woman lying on a blood-streaked floor, neck and remaining leg twisted into impossible positions.

  “Not much of her left.” Camille’s voice was thinner and squeakier than usual. “It looks like she’s been half eaten.”

  “Duncan Sharp thought John Cole did this, but now we all know it was probably the Rakshasa.” Dio’s tone was measured. Thoughtful. Bela realized the air Sibyl was looking past the photo rather than directly at it, and for the briefest moment, the air in the brownstone stirred. Wind chimes clanged softly, but only a few of them, as if the air had flowed in a straight, targeted line.

  Southeast.

  Toward where the murder Dio was talking about had occurred.

  Bela kept her gaze steady but used her terrasentience to track the gust, feeling the wind move over the floor of the brownstone, out the door, down the steps, then dissipate in the traffic on Fifth Avenue. Bela’s ability to track or sense anything that touched earth, even at some distance, far exceeded that of most Sibyls—kind of a compensation for a weaker terrakinetic ability. She couldn’t shake the world, but by the Goddess, she could find just about anything lost or hiding in it, so long as it had contact with elements of earth in some form or other.

  And this gust of wind speeding across the ground, it was definitely interesting.

  Did Dio have a gift with ventsentience? Could she track or sense things using the air as her primary investigative tool? And if she did have that skill—more unusual for air Sibyls—did she even know it?

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, out of season and strange enough to capture Bela’s attention. She carefully pulled her awareness back from the rock and sand in the asphalt and concrete, from the small particles of dirt scattered on the floor.

  “The tech geeks over at the OCU are checking for similar crimes worldwide,” Andy was saying. “Maybe we can get some sort of pattern that will allow us to track the Rakshasa migration into New York City.”

  “What’s her name?” Camille’s question slipped through the air like a sigh, her voice was so soft.

  Bela looked up from her own musings too fast, and before she could stop herself, she asked, “What?”

  Damnit, that sounded annoyed.

  Careful, came the whispered warnings of Nori and Devin, seemingly from a thousand miles away. The sound in Bela’s mind startled her, but she managed not to react.

  Camille reacted, though. She frowned at Bela’s sharp question, then lowered her eyes—but at least she persisted. “The … woman. The victim. She had a name, right?”

  Dio came completely back to herself, and the wind chimes in the brownstone went still. “Katrina Alsace Drake. She was an heiress who was in the process of liquidating her assets and donating them all to her charity, the Societal Aid Fund.”

  Camille looked up. “I’ve heard of them. They’re a serve-the-poor operation. Food, clothing, housing, legal representation for those who can’t afford it.”

  Andy shifted the picture of the brutalized woman to the side, revealing another photo, this one of a pleasant-looking brunette with big, innocent brown eyes and a wide smile. She was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a work apron. No high-society trappings, no surgical alterations to make herself more perfect. Just a person who seemed to be working to fulfill her own ideals.

  It was a dumb, empty question, but it rang true to Bela in this instance, so she spoke it aloud. “Who would want to kill her? She looks like everybody’s—”

  The words died in her throat, but Dio had already pursed her lips.

  Katrina Drake looks like everybody’s little sister. Bela didn’t smack herself in the forehead, but only because her willpower was formidable. Yeah. Good one, Bela.

  Dio’s next words came out in a tense blast. “Drake’s net worth was close to fourteen million. She had funds in stocks and real estate, but she weathered the market downturn well.”

  Camille kept her voice steady, despite her obvious distress at Dio’s reaction to Bela’s slip-up. “If we assume John Cole wasn’t a serial killer, then who hired the Rakshasa to, um, eat the heiress?”

  Andy answered, her green-brown eyes leveled on Dio like she was ready to blast her with a wave if that was what it took to keep her calm. “Jeremiah Drake is a possibility. The husband. Katrina was divorcing him. The courthouse database said irreconcilable differences, conflict with his teenage son from a previous marriage, and all that crap—but who knows the real reasons. Infidelity, abuse, vengeance—anything’s possible.”

  Camille pondered this with a twist of her hair. “And he’d have the
means.”

  “Her money.” Bela felt a fresh twist in her gut. “Damn, that’s cold.”

  Andy kept staring at Dio as she rattled off the next possibility. “We’ve got Merin Alsace, Katrina’s brother. With the husband cut loose, all of Katrina’s money would go to him—or at least that’s what we’re figuring until we see the will.”

  “Timing’s off, if the divorce wasn’t final.” Camille was engaged again, and her fear and fragility retreated. Bela thought she caught the faintest whiff of smoke, but she couldn’t be sure. “But who knows if the Rakshasa pay attention to calendars? Hiring them doesn’t mean you can control them.”

  Dio leaned back in her chair, still angry and silent over being reminded of her dead sister, but she was chilling out enough to let Andy relax and keep briefing them.

  “We’ve got Reese Patterson for a source—the Alsace family attorney. Good place to start, and given the society photos I found, he likes cheap-looking blondes.” Andy gave Dio a meaningful stare.

  Dio glared back at Andy, volunteering nothing, and Bela couldn’t help thinking about Nori again, and Dio’s sister Devin.

  Dio’s face looked so much like Devin’s, and those wide eyes made Bela see Devin’s agonized gaze as she died in Bela’s arms during a Legion attack on Fordham’s campus. It had been so easy to talk to Nori and Devin, and they were always ready to jump up and help the triad. Feelings and facts and laughter and work flowed so easily. Everything, just … everything was easier.

  And now?

  Now it was a struggle not to close her eyes and tell Dio to screw off, get over it, and go put on something sexy to tease the lawyer into spilling everything he knew. Instead, Bela drew in a few centering breaths, then chose her next words carefully. “Dio, are you willing to dress the part and see if you can get the lawyer talking?”

  Dio’s mouth came open, and her next question tumbled out with a schoolgirl’s snarky edge. “What am I, the quad hooker or something?”

  A swell of irritation brought Bela’s earth energy to the surface, and she fought back a surge that might have been powerful enough to shake furniture. “No, damnit, you’re our broom, and maybe our best shot at starting to clean up this mess.”