by Anna Windsor
The old Irish voice spoke again. “He will die, and as he passes, he’ll become of them. But you already know that, don’t you, cop?”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that,” a man said.
Shock made Duncan’s insides jump, and his teeth clamped together against the pain in his wounds. He realized he wasn’t back in the desert after all. He must have died and gone to hell, because the man who spoke—that was his old commander, Jack Blackmore. Blackjack.
“Duncan Sharp won’t give up,” Blackjack said. “He won’t stop. Not ever. You’ve never seen him in battle.”
“I think I have,” said the only voice Duncan really cared about, the one that was rich and smooth and feminine. “For almost two weeks now.”
He heard the admiration, and felt embarrassed by it. He didn’t deserve admiration for just staying alive.
Her warm fingers brushed against his neck and shoulder on the side that wasn’t bandaged, and something like electricity flowed all over his skin. The familiar sensation eased the fiery aches in his body and the sting of his latest round of war memories. Duncan forgot about admiration and embarrassment, and he started thinking about heaven instead of hell.
Then his mind went blank for a while. He didn’t know how long. Time had no meaning, if he was even still alive to worry about time.
Your angel is a looker, John Cole told him, the words winding through a seemingly infinite darkness. The redhead’s prettier, but she’s probably too delicate for your tastes, if you don’t count that sword she likes to carry.
Duncan ignored John’s voice. John was dead. His best friend was gone forever, buried in some flag-covered coffin, in his best dress uniform, with all his ribbons. Somehow Duncan knew that, even if he couldn’t remember the details. He only hoped he hadn’t killed the bastard himself.
I’m here, Duncan.
Shut up, Duncan thought back to the ghost voice.
Then there was more emptiness, with some shocks and misery and pain, followed by more cool electricity, and the sweet, sweet scent of his angel.
Her name is Bela, John told him.
“Bela,” Duncan tried to say, but his voice was just a bunch of croaking.
Hours later, maybe days, Blackjack spoke again. “John always wore that dinar, and it shocked anyone who touched it. Have you tried taking it off Duncan’s neck?”
“We’ll be doin’ no such thing,” said the old, crunchy Irish voice. “And neither will you. It dates from the time of the Kushan emperor Huvishka. Probably older’n anything you’ve ever dealt with—and it’s keyed its energy to him.” After a pause, she cackled and added, “Old things can have great power, Mr. Blackmore, but I suspect you know that, too.”
I’m wearing some zillion-year-old coin? Duncan remembered John putting a chain over his head. He tried to hold on to that image, then faded away from the voices and pain again, farther away this time. Sleeping. Or maybe just not existing. He barely felt the shocks, the strange energies that flowed across his body, wherever he might be. Maybe he was gone for good this time.
Bela whispered to him across the miles. “Are you giving up, Duncan Sharp? Pity. I thought you were a warrior.”
Duncan ground his teeth. He thought about carrying two wounded men to safety through a firefight that should have killed them all. He thought about walking back from the IED explosion. Thirty miles. Maybe more.
Keep going.
That was his mantra back then in the desert, when the bullets were flying.
Don’t stop. Just keep going.
He imagined himself moving back toward that inviting sound, toward Bela. He wanted to see her face again. He wanted to touch her and see if she was as soft as he imagined.
John Cole laughed at him. You’re out of your league.
“Fuck you,” Duncan mumbled.
Then he opened his eyes.
The edges of his vision seemed cloudy. Indistinct.
But she wasn’t.
His angel was right there in front of him, bending down, her dark hair pulled against her head, showing off the intriguing lines of her lightly tanned face. She had high cheekbones, and he noticed that her dark eyes had the slightest tilt. And she was wearing black leather.
Shit.
The scent of almonds and fresh berries filled Duncan’s nose, beating back the stink of antiseptic, bleach, and plaster as she leaned closer to his face. Her warm breath brushed his cheeks, his neck as her full lips curled into a smile.
“Fuck you, too,” she said, then unlocked a pair of cuffs holding his good hand against the rails of a hospital bed.
Duncan frowned and watched his angel withdraw. His thoughts swam in circles, and he tried to figure out who the hell had hammered spikes through his left arm. And why was his left cheek and shoulder on fire? He tried to sit up, to do something to make the angel come closer again, but a voice he would never forget snarled, “Be still before I bust the other side of your face, Sharp.”
Force of habit held Duncan in place as he managed to take in yellow walls and more people. He kept squinting until he made out the big outline of the man who had been his commanding officer in Afghanistan.
“Blackjack,” he croaked, then rubbed his throat with numb-feeling fingers.
Blackjack and a small army.
Saul and Calvin Brent were standing near his bed. And the long-haired blonde he had dreamed had tornadoes coming out of her ears in DUMBO—Dio, according to Cole’s voice. There was the redhead who looked too fragile to fight anything, except for the scimitar thing he had seen her swinging—and that was Camille, per John’s quiet commentary. Then there was the cop-like woman, who wasn’t wearing leather anymore, unlike her friends. She had on a wet sweatshirt and jeans, and her name was Andy.
Next to all of them stood a gray-haired old woman with a face like a red howler monkey’s, and this one was smoking. Like a human pipe.
Duncan blinked, trying to clear his vision.
When he opened his eyes again, he was face-to-face with Bela. “Angel” tried to come out of his throat.
It sounded like he was choking.
Duncan swore to himself and worked to sit up again, but too much shit was weighing him down. Plastic tubes. A cast on his arm. Handcuffs on that arm—and on both ankles, too. Were his neck and face bandaged on one side? His skin felt tight underneath the tape and gauze, like deep wounds were trying to scab and close.
“Stay down,” Blackjack commanded, but Duncan felt the cuffs on his other arm and ankles being unlocked.
He struggled into a sitting position, mostly because he wanted a better look at his angel in that unbelievable leather bodysuit.
“You were always mule-stubborn, Duncan,” Saul Brent said.
Cal added, “Dumb, too.”
“Jesus Christ, could somebody get a shovel for the male-bonding bullshit?” Andy squeezed the water out of one sweatshirt sleeve. “It’s getting a little high and deep in here.”
“That’s not bullshit you’re smelling,” said Duncan’s angel before she drifted out of his line of sight. “It’s testosterone.”
The howler monkey with smoke coming from the top of her head snickered. Duncan tried not to look at her, because he had no frame of reference for old women who smoked. Literally.
“You’re law enforcement,” he rasped in the direction of the wet chick, ignoring Blackjack and Saul and Cal as best he could.
“Yeah. Andy Myles. Nice to meet you.” Andy squeezed water out of her other sleeve and didn’t seem to care that it splattered all over the hospital room floor. “I used to be a lieutenant in the Occult Crimes Unit—the OCU. Now I’m a Sibyl. So are they.” She pointed to the blonde first, then the redhead, and finally his angel. “Her name’s Bela Argos, by the way, not Fuck You.”
Angel. That’s her name to me.
Duncan flexed the fingers at the end of his cast. He had to turn his head to see her, and as he stared at his angel, her cheeks flushed. Not much. Just enough to let him know she noticed him.
>
Yeah. That was good.
How much morphine was he on, anyway? Because he was beginning to have one hell of a fantasy involving that leather jumpsuit and that zipper. In his teeth. Moving slowly down—
“Sibyls are members of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood,” Blackjack’s voice snapped Duncan back to reality. “They’re working with local law enforcement in New York City and other locations.”
“We’re an ancient order of female warriors with elemental powers,” Andy told him. “Trained in one of four Motherhouses across the globe.”
“Rii-iight,” Duncan managed to force out of his dry throat, hearing the skepticism in his own voice. Next Blackjack would start in about vampires and werewolves and devils and all that other shit he’d started obsessing over in Afghanistan.
Before he finished having that thought, disturbing images flickered across Duncan’s consciousness.
Big cat-men. With huge claws. John Cole, shredded to death—then walking beside him in one of his desert dreams. Had he seen those things? Had they really happened?
John was dead. That much Duncan knew for sure, but—
I’m here, Duncan. Here until we finish off the Rakshasa.
Rakwhatthehell? He’d heard that word before but still couldn’t make sense of it. And John’s voice—that had been quiet but definite, and it seemed to be coming from the middle of Duncan’s brain.
Duncan shook his head, and his bandaged neck blazed with pain. “Dark goddess,” he said as he rubbed it again and finally focused on Blackjack’s way-too-serious face.
So his angel really was some kind of magic witch-warrior?
Duncan might have laughed if he hadn’t been sitting in a bright yellow hospital room with chicks in leather and an old lady with smoke coming off her skin, dealing with a John Cole hallucination bouncing around in his head, and remembering giant cat-creatures. Then there were Saul and Cal, flanking Blackjack like bodyguards, looking just as serious as Blackjack did. Saul and Cal were as down-to-earth as they came. They didn’t go for bullshit, and they weren’t saying anything to contradict Blackjack.
“Sworn to defend the weak and untrained from the supernaturally strong, like he said.” Andy caught Duncan’s attention by raising one hand. “Yada yada yada. It’s the same old serve-and-protect.” The sprinkler over her head drizzled a stream of water onto her fingertips. “With extra tricks.”
The water hit her skin … and disappeared.
No steam, no streaks, no drips. It was just gone.
Duncan wondered how badly his brain had been injured in DUMBO.
“Neat, huh?” Andy’s smile was wistful as she glanced at the sprinkler. “Too bad I can’t manage it with larger amounts.” Her gaze shifted to her feet and the small puddle spreading beneath her dirty white sneakers. “I can attract it to me from the ground, from pipes, from sinks and sprinklers and bodies of water. I can channel it, but I can’t destroy it or completely absorb it. Yet. Give me time.”
Duncan looked at Bela. Her dark eyes were calm but concerned, and her expression was unreadable. A dozen memories of her whispering to him and touching his face competed with each other. He wanted time to sort through each image and enjoy it.
When he’d first seen her in DUMBO, she’d had a sword, hadn’t she?
A long, down-curving blade with a serrated end, like a kora, a kind of sword he’d seen once in Nepal. A kind of sword made to behead things. Duncan felt his insides lurch as pieces snapped into place. Pieces he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to understand—but the picture couldn’t be denied.
“Warriors with elemental powers.” Just saying it out loud made him feel batshit crazy. He knew he sounded as sarcastic as the old, smoking Irish woman, but he didn’t really care. “What are you trying to pull on me, Blackjack?”
“The Rakshasa cut you with their claws, cop.” The old Irish woman let off a burst of flames from her knuckles as she pointed to the bandaged half of Duncan’s neck. “You’re infected, and there’s nothin’ we can do to stop you from changin’.”
“You’re crazy.” Duncan’s response was reflex. He didn’t usually disrespect his elders, even when they were covered with puffs of smoke. The Sibyls, all four of them, twitched at his insult, and the bolt of shame that struck Duncan’s insides felt like a rebuke from his very religious mother back in Georgia.
“Sorry,” he said. “The way I was raised, this kind of talk would get you taken to church—or sent to hell. I just don’t believe in anything you’re telling me.”
Tell her you won’t turn, John Cole’s voice insisted, louder than before. Tell the old woman I won’t let it happen.
Something tickled, then burned against his chest, heating up the cloth of his hospital gown. Duncan glanced down to see the coin John Cole had placed around his neck during the battle at DUMBO.
Duncan tore his gaze from the coin and stared at the fire-breathing howler monkey, disliking her and liking her all at the same time. She seemed like a real bitch—but he liked the strength of her voice and her attitude. Kind of like an ancient, retired police officer. She probably would have worked Vice, or maybe Narcotics.
“Who are you?” Duncan asked the old woman.
“She’s Mother Keara,” Bela answered him in that rich, silky voice. He felt the sound of it like a tangible comforting force on his aching skin. “One of the oldest fire Sibyls in the world, and one of the wisest. She knows a lot about fighting ancient demons. All the Mothers do. Several of them have been working to keep you alive, but Mother Keara is the only one staying here full-time.”
Tell Mother Keara about me and the coin, Duncan.
Duncan studied Mother Keara. The fire in her eyes. The fire in her soul. He could see the general in her then. The way she would protect her troops at all costs. When her gaze strayed to the Sibyls in the room, he noticed that her eyes flickered in a certain way as she appraised Bela.
This old woman was attached to his angel. Probably protective as hell.
Christ, what are you waiting for? John was starting to sound desperate. Can’t you see the power rolling off her?
Duncan squinted at the old woman. A strange shifting sensation gripped his mind, as if he were joining his thoughts with someone—no, something—else. Something other and alien, yet also familiar. Compatible. He had a flash of the blood-brother ritual he and John Cole had performed when they were eight. Moon Pies, Coca-Cola, and pocketknives, down in the cornfield. All very solemn and way stupid, but it was the same sensation now. A quick cut, a little burning, then nothing but rightness and relaxing. He swallowed, almost tasting the sweet chocolate and hot, fizzy soft drink they had shared that day so long ago.
John Cole’s knowledge and awareness flowed into Duncan’s, until they mingled almost seamlessly. Then, slowly, like a distant vista coming into focus through a camera lens, Duncan saw a change in Mother Keara. Or, more specifically, the air around her. A rippling aura of fire and death swelled out from her wrinkled skin and gnarled limbs. Sheets of it, in brilliant reds and greens, then a deeper blue like the hottest of flames. The colors came in layers, then layers on top of layers.
“I won’t turn,” he said, understanding John’s urgency now.
The old woman’s dangerous energy flared like a flashbang, and Duncan winced, seeing spots for a few seconds. She leaned toward him, close enough that the deadly heat of the flames that had to be living in her heart and soul made his breath come short.
“What did you say?” she asked, her voice echoing with the force of a roaring explosion.
Duncan’s words deserted him.
This was too horror-movie. He couldn’t handle it.
Talk to her, John Cole urged, but Duncan shut him out.
This was still his body. Still his life.
Right?
Not for long, John muttered, and Duncan had the horrible feeling his dead best friend was telling him the complete truth.
(14)
“I won’t turn,” Duncan said again, partly of his o
wn will, and partly because he felt as if John Cole had hold of his tongue, flapping it to make him talk. “Not until I’m just about to die.”
Then, drawing off John’s knowledge, Duncan reported, “This dinar around my neck was blessed by the priest who trapped the Ruck—ah—Rakshasa over a thousand years ago. John Cole found it in the temple the day the demons were released, and that’s why he survived. He gave it to me in DUMBO. As long as I’m wearing it, the Rakshasa can’t touch me directly. Its energy will help slow the infection, and John knows how to keep me from changing until the moment before I die.”
Mother Keara’s sharp green eyes drew down to slits. “Your friend John Cole is dead.”
“Maybe his body, but his mind—” Duncan broke off. He wanted to pick the right word to describe the process that had put John Cole’s thoughts in his brain, but he wasn’t completely certain. He also couldn’t look at anyone in the room save for Mother Keara. No way did he want to tell this to anyone, least of all an Irish howler monkey with fire shimmering all around her.
Mother Keara glanced from the coin to Duncan’s face, gazing so deeply into his eyes he wondered if she could melt his skull without ever laying a finger on him. Then she smiled and tapped the side of her head, as if she understood that Duncan had something unusual going on his brain.
Transmigration, John told Duncan. Say it. If I have to take you over and make you say it, I will, but you’ll look different and sound different, and they’ll chain you to the bed again.
“Transmigration.” Duncan figured they’d take him for a full-blown idiot. “John—well, shit. The John voice in my head says to tell you we’re sharing space.”
Silence reigned between the yellow walls of the room, which, now that he was studying it more closely, looked more like a giant bricked-in jail cell than a proper hospital area.
Blackjack and the Brent brothers weren’t laughing. Bela and her Sibyl friends were all staring at him, and none of them seemed to be breathing. For reasons Duncan couldn’t explain, their response made everything real to him. The remnants of his denial fell away like torn cloth, and his gut churned. It was all he could do to keep himself still.