by Anna Windsor
“If these four don’t kick your ass,” Nick said, “the Mothers will.”
Bela held up her hand to stop Dio before the air Sibyl ripped open the closet door and started tossing daggers and swords and dart guns to Andy and Camille—through the Lowell twins, if necessary. It wasn’t easy, but Bela smiled at Jack Blackmore and used her nicest, most civilized voice to explain reality to the arrogant bastard.
“You’re not taking Duncan anywhere.”
Blackmore got all stiff and red in the face, and Saul and Calvin looked ready to do whatever he told them to do.
“It’s not open for discussion.” Blackmore clenched his big hands like he couldn’t quite believe anyone would argue with him. “It’s the safest option for everyone involved.”
“This isn’t the army, Captain.” Andy moved closer to Bela as Camille assumed a subtle but definite battle stance. “This isn’t even the NYPD. We’ll work with you, but we don’t work for you, and we make our own decisions about people in our care, no matter who—or what—they are.”
“I suppose ‘I told you so’ would be a cliché,” Creed said.
Nick moved so quickly that he was a blur even to Bela’s sharp vision. In less than a fraction of a second, he was standing directly behind the Brent brothers, putting his hands on their shoulders. Big golden hands, reflecting his supernatural Curson essence. When Nick spoke, his voice had a deep, demonic resonance that made everyone in the room stand a little straighter. “Give it up. If you try to force this, they’ll leave pieces of you all over Manhattan.”
“Working with Sibyls is a diplomatic challenge.” Creed maintained his full human form, though he was just as capable as Nick of swapping back and forth between man and huge seven-foot golden glowing Curson demon. “And I did tell you so.”
“Fine.” Blackmore sounded furious. “What is it you want from me in exchange for Sharp? My parent agency can pay for your time and trouble. We have technology that might interest you, and some weaponry.”
Andy doused the captain with a cold blue wave she must have drawn from the nearest sprinkler head. The powerful sheet of water smacked the Brent brothers, too, surprising them enough to make them back off a step—though Dio’s sharp blast of wind might have been what made them move. The air in the room swirled, ringing chimes and making lamps jitter on tables as Dio strode forward to back up Andy.
Blackmore didn’t give any ground as Dio’s very targeted gusts settled back to stillness. He just stood there, open-mouthed, dripping on the carpet.
“I suggest you spend a lot more time with Creed, Nick, and the OCU learning about Sibyls before you come back to this house and act like an ass.” Bela let a little earth energy creep into her voice, until the air seemed to shake with her words. “We’re not ready to give up on Duncan Sharp, and we’re quite capable of doing our own examining and containing, if it comes to that.”
“Parent agency,” Andy grumbled at the captain. “Really? Seriously? Go fuck yourself.”
Blackmore eyed Andy, and Bela thought she saw something like amusement or respect warring with the frustration in his gaze. He shed some more water, then managed to make his mouth work enough to ask, “Does Duncan have John’s dinar?”
Bela gave him a single nod, wishing Camille would fire up and set the bastard’s pants on fire.
“Interesting.” Blackmore ran his hand through his hair, wringing out another bunch of drips and drops. “I wonder if that gives him some protection. It’s what kept John alive all these years, until DUMBO. But then, this is Duncan we’re talking about. He might be using sheer force of will to stay human.”
Camille was glaring at the man, but there was no sign of smoke or flames. Andy’s water energy was building, and if Blackmore set her off again, Bela had little doubt that she’d drown the jerk, or wash him out the front door and leave him flat on his ass on the sidewalk.
“You were ready to cart him off, cut him up, and kill him a minute ago.” Dio’s wind swirled around her shoulders. “Now you’re talking about him like he’s always been your best buddy.”
“I’ve known Duncan Sharp even longer than I knew John Cole.” Blackmore’s posture changed to more relaxed, maybe a little more human, and the asshole factor in his expression cranked down a few notches. “He was a Ranger in the Gulf War, and he’s been a dedicated civilian officer since he retired from active duty. If you think you can save his life, I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Especially since I don’t seem to have another choice.”
“Amazing.” Andy released some of her water energy back to the universe, making all the sprinkler heads drizzle. “Fed version 2.0. It can walk, talk, show off, make an ass of itself, and suck up before it gets its dick ripped off.”
Blackmore’s eyebrows lifted, and his hands twitched like he was thinking about guarding his groin.
Nick took that opportunity to head for the brownstone’s front door, and Bela appreciated his good sense of timing.
“Run along now, boys.” She used her earth energy to gently move the captain and the Brent brothers in the direction Nick took.
As Dio added a hefty blast of wind to the encouragement, Creed opened the door for them and watched them stumble across the threshold. It was a wonder they didn’t tumble down the steps and go splat on the sidewalk.
“We’ll call you when Duncan starts to wake up,” Bela called after the men as Nick started to pull the door shut. “If you don’t piss me off again.”
(12)
Strada stood in human form with Griffen near a location Griffen had identified as Sixty-third and Central Park. Strada was wearing jeans and a T-shirt glorifying an oddly dressed traveling minstrel called a “rapper.” To match the ensemble, Strada had softened and smoothed his features to give a youthful appearance. It was good practice. He needed many faces and personas to succeed in this strange and fascinating time and place.
They were just inside a stone fence under cover of a few trees, far enough back to peer over the top of the large structure to the row of modern houses and buildings beyond. Rich scents of summer filled the air in the waning light of day, strawberries and leaves, grass and flowers. Strada had learned the common and proper scientific names for each new plant and animal he had encountered since his arrival in the city. Strada enjoyed the reds and greens, the yellows and browns, even the moist blue of a sky that didn’t stretch across miles of desert.
The stench of modern vehicles—that he could do without.
“Rush hour.” Griffen opened his arms toward the crush of automobiles and people and buses trying to press between yellow cabs. “Nothing like the Upper East Side. Sorry.”
“Activity provides cover,” Strada said, distracted by the ripe stench of a horse-drawn buggy passing nearby. The horse, sensing him, gave a high-pitched whicker and tried to shy down a side street. “You were right to bring me now.”
“I’ve been here before as a guest, but a different group of Sibyls lived here then.” Griffen’s fists flexed, and the hatred on his face was unmistakable. “Our friends.” He snorted. “They were supposed to protect us.”
Out on the street, the horse bucked against its harness, refusing to move its buggy forward.
Strada knew the full story of Griffen’s past, because he had taken it from the man’s mind the night he snatched the man out of a ritual he was performing with his Coven in a boarded-up, defiled modern-day temple. He had plied Griffen for cooperation, first by force and then with promises and rewards. “The loss of your priestess lover to the demon leader of the Legion still hurts you?”
Griffen let out a ragged laugh. “Charlotte Heart’s death set me free to find true power. Then the fall of the Legion freed my Coven from servitude to those high-handed bastards. As for the Sibyls, I’ll enjoy seeing them get their due. The universe always provides for those who serve it with faith and vigor.”
Griffen’s intense shifts from anger to sarcasm, joy, then religious fervor puzzled Strada. Strada’s eyes followed the route of the horse as i
t dragged its hansom toward the side street again, fighting its handler until it dashed by on the far sidewalk. Humans had such a trickster’s mix of emotions, it was hard to sort them all out no matter how long he spent walking inside human skin and watching the world through human eyes. With people and places in this modern world, nothing was ever quite what it seemed.
Take the brownstone directly across the road, for example. It looked plain. Even innocuous. It was clean enough, with three stories of rock walls, simple white curtains and no pots of flowers adoring its sills. Anyone in the city would feel comfortable climbing its few front steps and using its brass knocker to tap on its thick wooden door—anyone who wouldn’t be thrown into the onrushing traffic when they struck the powerful elemental barriers the Sibyls had constructed to protect their lair.
Strada didn’t even bother testing the strength of those protections. When he used the full power of his Rakshasa vision, the bright, shimmering light was enough to wound his sensitive eyes. He could taste the earth, the air, the fire, the water, even at this distance, and he detected no weakness in the coverage. From what Tarek and Aarif reported from their failed experiment with the Created in this park a week ago, the Sibyls could construct such a barrier quickly and hold it for some time, though it did cost them energy.
When Strada’s pride came in earnest to kill these women, they would have to come in force, and in tiger form. There would be no dividing the barriers or prying past them. They would have to shatter the energy, like he planned to shatter its makers.
“The police officer is still inside,” Griffen informed him. “I have sentries watching day and night. The minute he’s clear, I’ll notify you.”
Strada answered with a quick purr, then asked, “Is the NYPD truly so unfailing in the defense of its own?”
“Yes. Our former employer was correct.” Griffen leaned out of the trees, as if to get a better glimpse of the traffic. Strada appreciated the human’s tact in not mentioning how bits of that employer had been recently discovered in a local river. “If you kill a cop, the rest of his brothers and sisters will hunt you without stopping, and they’ll do it forever. Think of them like a pride, only with guns and connections to much, much bigger guns, if they think that’s what they need.”
Strada had no fear of guns, whatever the size, but vengeance for the sake of one’s pride—that he could understand. He had rejoiced in the taste of John Cole’s blood, retribution for the true brothers the heinous bastard had stolen from him. He would not challenge the NYPD, for now. The time would come for that, when he and his pride were more prepared, and when disrupting the NYPD’s operations would be of use to him.
Strada went back to studying the brownstone, and quickly understood that the protections extended to the other houses beside the Sibyl lair, though one of those dwellings had its own unusual barriers. Opposite, really, of the work the Sibyls had done. The blue house to the right of the brownstone had an undercurrent of quiet, whispering energy, seemingly designed to render it plain and utterly unnoticeable. That might have worked, were it not for the bold designs of the Sibyls.
Given the energy that such protections required, Strada doubted they could extend very far in any direction. The physical cost to the Sibyls would be too high.
“Come with me,” he told Griffen, and began walking away from the shield of the trees and the stone fence.
Griffen rushed after him to the sidewalk and then the nearest crosswalk. “Will they sense you?”
“Not in this human shape, if I do not cross the barriers they’ve established. Stay on my right, and I will spare us that difficulty.” Strada waited for the light to change, then crossed the traffic-laden street to the sidewalk at the corner of the block that contained the brownstone.
“We could enter through one of the other houses,” Griffen suggested, catching up and remaining at Strada’s right hand, as instructed.
“The other dwellings are equally defended.” Strada used his powerful sense of smell to track and follow the direction taken by the frightened horse that had tried to flee him. Animals had an unfailing sense of elemental energy, both its presence and its absence. Likely, the creature had attempted to take a path of least resistance.
They walked a short way down a side street, then arrived at a long alleyway that crossed behind the brownstone.
“Yes.” Strada nodded. “The protections are designed for their lair, and perhaps to make life easier and safer for their neighbors—but they do not cover the entire block. We can position here, and at the far end, there.” He pointed to the opposite entrance to the alley.
Griffen looked excited by this, and he lifted himself to his toes to peer over the metal trash receptacles at the alley mouth. “When Sibyls feel threatened, they call for help. More Sibyls and police officers with the Occult Crimes Unit will respond.”
Strada dismissed this concern with a soft snarl. “We will determine how much time it would take reinforcements to arrive, and be certain we finish our business quickly. We will test and study until we know our enemy as well as they know themselves, Griffen. We will plan until we feel certain there are no flaws in our strategy. When we move, we will crush theses females and be gone before their friends even begin to understand their fate.” He turned away from the alley and strode back toward Central Park, his mind already shifting back to the renovated warehouse office, and to Tarek and Aarif, who were setting up a meeting with a previous employer who had paid them well for a past service. “Our victory must be absolute and devastating. It will serve as a clear message to the remaining Sibyls and their allies not to interfere in the affairs of the Eldest.”
Griffen ran along behind Strada like a well-trained child, up the sidewalk and back across the teeming city street. His deference pleased Strada. The human had so quickly grasped the absolute power of a culla. One day he would make a fine Created.
“They’ll still interfere because it’s their job, their role in our world,” Griffen said.
“Yes, but with hesitance and dread, or the haste born of headlong fury. The advantage will always be ours.”
For a few moments, they moved in silence, but Griffen had more on his mind. “Sibyls are well trained and cautious. How will you get them into the alley?”
“The same way I would force any cattle to slaughter.” Strada swept back into Central Park, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his human skin. “Herd them.”
(13)
Over and over again, she was there when he opened his eyes.
Other people came and went, but she was the constant, and Duncan was glad. He couldn’t stay awake long enough to learn her real name, but he recognized the feel of his angel, the smell of her—even the sound of her breathing.
He drew a slow breath, drinking her soft almond scent like wine. “You’re perfect.”
“If you say so.” She was close. Smiling. Her fingers brushed across the back of his hand. The sensation warmed him.
“What are you?” he murmured as his vision blurred and his eyes closed.
“I’m a Sibyl.”
Duncan figured he hadn’t heard that last part right.
He slept again.
Woke.
She was there, pulling a soft sheet higher to cover his chest and ease his chills.
“You call yourself a Sibyl, whatever that is.” His voice was hoarse. A cool glass touched his lips, and he took a sip of water. The pressure of her palm on his chest felt like an anchor, binding him to reality and the world. “I think you’re an angel.”
She laughed. “You have so got the wrong girl, Duncan Sharp.”
Her eyes were so dark they drew him in and covered him as softly and surely as the sheet she adjusted. “I don’t think I’m that far off the mark. Angel.”
“Stop that,” she told him, then let her fingers trail across his forehead. A rich, relaxing energy swept across his body, and once more he drifted away.
The next time he woke, she was gently bathing his face, his forehead, now his ch
eeks and chin and mouth. The connection between them was a real thing, a bright thing, and he wondered if he could touch it if he tried.
“Rest,” she said, and her voice made him want to hear more. His body reacted to her nearness, getting warmer and warmer until he had to sit up and find a way to touch her.
“Rest,” she said again as he yanked against the cuffs on his wrists.
Her fingertips tingled along his jaw, and that wave of relaxing peace claimed him again.
Angel, his mind whispered.
That had to be what she was.
Or maybe, just maybe, she was a witch.
Don’t stop. Can’t stop.
Duncan tried to breathe, but he was hauling too much weight to inflate his lungs. The desert tore at him as he ran. Superheated gray rock dust stung his eyes. He tasted burning grit and salt, felt the fire in his chest, his face, his gut.
Don’t stop!
Two wounded men, one slung over either shoulder.
He staggered.
Bullets dug into flint on either side of him, sparking, spitting dirt and shrapnel into his thighs.
He had to keep moving—
“No matter how much healin’ we do, we can’t cure the infection, but we have slowed it to a crawl.”
Duncan’s Afghanistan flashback flickered into blackness. His muscles twitched from the sensation of running his injured buddies out of a firefight. He could still taste the desert—but that was an Irish voice. Old and crackly. Not hateful, but not friendly, either.
Who was it?
Where was he?
Still hot, like the desert—but the sensation was coming from inside him. From his neck and shoulder. Like his skin was on fire, and that fire was trying to spread, only something was holding it back. It was almost like an icy line had been drawn from his chin to his chest and straight through his back, containing the heat.