by Anna Windsor
I’m not going to win this one.
She almost choked on the hurt.
Duncan’s beautiful eyes consumed her, and she felt the electric pressure of his fingers, so soft on her cheeks, her lips. “Promise me you won’t come to the townhouse,” he said. “I need that from you, Angel.”
This time Bela heard what he didn’t say, what she hadn’t let herself understand before when he asked her for the same concession.
Don’t come to the townhouse, because if I change and the Mothers have to put me down, I don’t want you to feel it. I don’t want you to see it.
“I promise,” she said, too loud, almost shouting, hating the words, and hating herself for saying them. “But I’m sending Andy with you. She can heal better than anyone.”
Duncan considered this as he took his hands from Bela’s face. “If she’s willing, I’d be glad for her help.”
He didn’t kiss her again before he walked out of the bedroom.
If he had, Bela might have taken back her promise, and every vow she’d ever made. Cynda Flynn Lowell damned sure wouldn’t have lived to walk Duncan up the stairs to her triad, out of the brownstone, and away from Bela—and Bela might not have been coherent enough to speak to her quad when they came rushing into her room.
As it was, Bela was able to accept Camille’s hugs and Dio’s swearing, and Andy’s solemn promise that she’d do whatever it took to bring Duncan back to her.
Bela just wasn’t sure she could believe in any of it.
(29)
Time.
Bela slid her fingers along the waist of her jeans.
Her entire life had been taken over by a sense that some grand clock was ticking, and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t smash the glass, the hands, the gears, and gain any reprieve.
She glanced at the clock hanging near the front door. “It’s been hours. They should be back by now.”
From behind her, in the brownstone’s living area, Camille and Dio didn’t answer, but Bela felt a surge of their energies, directed at supporting her.
Camille was sorting through tiny metal charms she’d made in the lab, using her laser-like fire to examine them. Dio was sketching at the big wooden table, drawing ways to take out Cynda and her triad the next time they came face-to-face. She’d come up with a few realistic, bloody scenarios, but Bela wouldn’t spend too much time looking at any of them. Riana, Cynda, and Merilee were probably the only women in New York City who could have walked into Bela’s home, hurt her like that, and walked out in one piece—save for her own quad and Mother Keara. Cynda did what she had to do. That’s all.
The front window offered a view of Fifth Avenue and Central Park. Lights from cars, buses, and taxis gleamed against the gray dusk, and the trees behind the stone wall across the street seemed shadowy and ominous.
Was he still alive?
Would she know if he wasn’t?
Were the Rakshasa close by?
Could she sense them if they were?
The questions came, endless, relentless, ticking like the clock in her head.
Bela wanted to believe that her Sibyl instincts would tell her if Duncan turned demon, if he died. That her mind would warn her if tiger-demons were sneaking toward the brownstone.
She couldn’t know any of that for certain.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, felt certain now.
She didn’t even know for sure that the Rakshasa could seek or find locations protected by elemental locks. It was just a suspicion.
Bela squinted at the trees, letting her enhanced vision give her the details. Walkers. Joggers. Bikers. Runners.
Dogs on leashes.
No monsters.
And no Duncan.
The leaves hadn’t started to turn yet, but Bela could almost taste the coolness that evening was bringing to the city.
“None of us are that good at healing, but maybe we’d be moral support,” Camille said from her usual perch on one of the overstuffed camel-colored chairs. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the townhouse?”
Damnit, of course I want to go.
But she couldn’t do that to Duncan. Not after she’d promised.
“I’m sure.” Bela dug her teeth into her lip so she wouldn’t start crying again.
“He’ll be fine.” Dio’s voice carried a note of authority mingled with irritation, like she refused to even consider another alternative. “He has to be fine. The Mothers will be careful, and Andy’s there.”
Bela leaned her forehead against the cool window glass to calm herself down, staring at the endless lines of vehicles beginning to clog up in the early-evening rush.
Camille held up a single copper charm. Bela could see it in the window’s reflection. “This one’s the most similar to the metal in Duncan’s dinar, in terms of how it responds to my energy.”
“House nerd,” Dio muttered, leaning over the table to sketch more bloody murder.
“But now I’m thinking it can’t be in the treatment, like how we make the elementally locked bullets and knives for the OCU.” Camille turned the charm over in her fingers. “It’s got to happen in the forging. Some sort of elemental transformation that happens when the metal’s in its liquid form, or maybe cooling, with a glassy surface.”
Bela’s attention pulled away from the view out the window for a few seconds, and she looked at Camille. “So you’d need to start with basic ingredients and forge from scratch?”
“Exactly. Then I could make each of us a projective coin like the dinar.” Camille let the copper charm bounce on the pile of other charms, and Bela felt a tiny tingle in her earth energy when it made contact with the other metals. “I don’t think my charms could repel Rakshasa, but it would magnify our elemental sentience. We’d be able to track fainter traces in our elements, even over long distances.”
Bela studied Camille’s delicate features and the light, controlled fire energy playing in the air around her shoulders. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to a fire Sibyl, but you can keep using my lab whenever you want. We’ll all help you. Except maybe Andy. One flood, and all those machines would be history.”
“No, definitely not Andy.” Camille laughed.
Bela glanced at Dio, who swiped a red pencil across her page. “Don’t look at me. I wouldn’t know a beaker from a burner.”
The chimes all across the brownstone gave a faint jingle.
Bela startled, then looked at the door. Her chest tightened. “Please, let this be Andy, bringing Duncan back.”
Dio and Camille glanced at the chimes as Bela let her earth energy flow outward to find the source of the energy moving the chimes. Excitement drove her awareness faster than usual, out of the brownstone and over the sidewalk, then farther, across the street and into Central Park, toward the townhouse—
Oh, Goddess.
Bela staggered back from the window and hit her knees.
Dark power.
Like a moving wall of horror.
It rolled over her. Terror. Nightmares. Little-girl fear.
She sucked air and tried to yell.
No sound but the chimes.
Ringing louder. Out of tune. The noise warped and hissed and flattened until the pipes sounded like bones banging in a graveyard wind.
“Unrighteous!” The word choked out of Bela’s throat like someone was strangling her, and she couldn’t control it. Pain. Pain everywhere in her body. Her head was exploding. Her awareness fractured like glass crushed under heavy boots.
Someone screamed.
Camille?
Dio?
Bela’s body went stiff as she fought to drag her earth power back to herself, and her eyes slammed closed. The ground shook from her panic, hard enough to make her teeth clatter together.
“Filthy,” her voice rasped. Nails on a chalkboard, even to her own ears. “Scrape it off, please, get it off me!”
But she couldn’t escape the creeping sense of putrid mold covering every inch of her.
The ground was po
isoned.
The earth was hurting her.
Hands grabbed her shoulders. Cool metal pressed against her chest. Copper. Camille’s charm. A fresh blast of air power swept through Bela, and fire, hot and furious, hacking at the deadly earth energy trying to pull her down forever into its suffocating depths.
Bela focused on the copper, on its purity, on how the fire and wind touched it, and touched her. She let it move through her and join with her natural earth power to fend off the horrible, unnatural energy.
The darkness howled at her.
Bela howled right back, and tore herself away from the horrors trying to suck her dry. The stench of ammonia threatened to overwhelm her, but heat blasted into her and wind beat against her face, cleansing her, purging the awful sensations from her consciousness. Thunder roared right above her head, making her ears pop.
Bela’s eyes flew open just as the lights in the brownstone exploded into fragments of glass and sizzling, burning filaments. Darkness covered the room as Bela sucked in air and stood, shaking, with Dio and Camille supporting her.
“They’re coming,” Bela gasped. She pulled Camille’s charm off her chest and clenched it in her fist. “Here. Now.”
Dio swore and let her go, flinging herself toward the weapons closet. Less than a minute later, they were suited up and armed, but Bela was still shaking as she drew her sword.
“How many?” Camille asked, hefting her shamshir over her shoulder, ready to hack anything that came through the front door.
Dio shifted her African throwing knives into one hand and grabbed Bela’s free wrist. Bela felt the full strength of air and wind supporting her as she forced herself to reach out with her terrasentience, toward the advancing Rakshasa again.
There.
Still in the park, but closer now. She felt them like a sick, infected wave rolling across the grass. The perverted energy boiling outward from their advance left no question that the typical elemental locks on the brownstone wouldn’t repel them. Not with these numbers. Not with this strength.
“Three,” she said. “No, five. Seven. Damnit! Ten! At least ten. How could there be ten? Probably more. And humans with them, with elemental talent.”
“Death,” Dio whispered, tracking the filth by air, just as Bela was following their advance on the ground. “One purpose. Killing.”
The white Rakshasa Strada was leading this attack. Bela kept her distance from where the demon’s claws tore into the earth, but his intentions were palpable. He was coming to destroy anything that might pose a threat to him or his fellow demons. They would start with the brownstone, but they wouldn’t stop until every Sibyl in New York City—every Sibyl in the world—was dead.
“They’re going to slaughter us all,” Bela and Dio said at the same time as they pulled back from the tracking, and Dio let go of Bela’s wrist.
Camille’s shamshir burst into flames. At the same moment, she let loose a blast of fire energy into the communications system, cracking half the projective mirrors around the platform table and ringing some of the chimes so forcefully the pipes burst into flames, molten metal singing holes in the wood and carpet.
The tattoo on Bela’s forearm burned, mortar to pestle to broom, down its wavy connecting lines with an urgency and pain she hadn’t felt since the Legion wars. She knew every Sibyl in New York City, maybe even in the world, felt that same burn.
The message would be more than clear.
Help us!
But who could reach them in time?
“Bela.” Dio’s terrified, furious tone drew her back. “We can’t win. We’re going to lose this fight, and we’re going to die.”
Rage and dread burned through Bela like a wild surge of Camille’s power. “No. I won’t let it happen.”
“Bela—” Dio started, but Bela cut her off with a snarl.
“We can make it to the townhouse.” She pushed Dio toward the kitchen door. “Out the back, into the alley—you first, then Camille. I won’t let them kill you. Us. Any of us.”
Camille growled like a rabid animal, and Bela could feel how it ripped at the fire Sibyl to disengage from any battle, even a hopeless one, without a fight.
Dio was already hammering toward the kitchen.
Bela grabbed Camille’s elbow and got a defensive burn for her trouble.
“Camille!” She held on anyway, letting her fingers burn as she pulled the fire Sibyl toward the kitchen, her earth-enhanced voice rising above the roar of Camille’s expanding flames. “Get out of here! Run, Camille, run!”
(30)
Everything was too bright, even though it was dusk.
Duncan stared out the back window of Riana Lowell’s big black Jeep as Andy Myles inched them through the sluggish traffic. He wasn’t sure if he was seeing more light because of what the Mothers had done to make sure John couldn’t take him over again, or because the light was really there. Blackjack, riding up front in the shotgun seat, looked out the windows like he could see the strange brightness, too.
Behind them on the road, Saul and Calvin Brent were driving Mother Yana, Mother Keara, and Mother Anemone in Bela’s SUV. They had come along to explain their findings and thoughts, how they had forced a closer mental bond between Duncan and John—but something was wrong.
Off.
Duncan’s gut hurt from it.
John, still furious and flattened from all the Mothers’ prodding, stirred in Duncan’s brain, then seemed to come to attention.
I feel it, he said.
The world seemed completely ass-backward and fucked up. Maybe it was the End of Days, and nobody had bothered to tell Duncan. He dug his fingers into his jeans, trying to get a fix on what he was sensing, but he had to grab the panic bar above his door as Andy changed lanes too fast. Christ. This woman was going to climb a cab’s ass or breed with a city bus and kill them all.
Everything in the streets seemed to get louder.
Too loud!
Duncan reached to cover his ears.
Flames shot out of the coin around his neck, burning the metal into his chest, branding him, melting toward bone until Duncan yelled from the pain and pried it off his skin.
He couldn’t think. Couldn’t understand.
John screamed. Primal. Out of his mind, like a man shot to pieces. Duncan’s slash wounds blazed, tearing his skin as they extended.
“Damn!” Andy stomped the Jeep’s brakes so hard Duncan almost snapped his seat belt. His head bounced off the back of Blackjack’s headrest. The squeal of tires stabbed at his sensitive hearing as the Jeep bucked to a stop. Air bags burst into deployment as the SUV bashed into the Jeep’s back bumper.
No air bag ever touched Andy. She was already out of the vehicle, running like Satan was chasing her, past the stalled traffic, straight down Fifth Avenue.
Blackjack punched at the cloth, then used his pocketknife to slice his way free of the side air bags as Duncan ripped off his own jammed seat belt and got out, his brain swimming from pain and confusion. The moment his feet hit pavement, he glanced back at the SUV. Calvin Brent was crawling out of it. A couple of cars had jammed to a stop behind them. Horns honked. Fists waved out open windows as traffic tried to wedge itself around the fender-bender.
Duncan processed that the SUV’s other doors were open and that all the Mothers were gone. He swung his gaze back toward the direction Andy had taken. The old women were moving on, right behind her, flying down the sidewalk like racing teenagers. He doubted most civilians could even see them, they were moving so fast.
Cold dread gripped him.
“Bela.”
The stench of cat piss struck him in the face, distant but strong. His slash wounds ripped another inch in both directions.
“Bela!” Duncan wheeled, grabbed Blackjack by the collar, and shook him so hard his eyeballs must have rattled. “She’s in trouble. They’re in trouble. Call for backup. Do it now!”
Blackjack tore away from him, yanked out his cell, and started spitting commands.
Duncan was running before any of that registered, following after Andy and the Mothers. He was aware of Blackjack yelling from behind him, and the Brent brothers, too.
Something about his weapon.
His Glock.
Which he didn’t have.
The Mothers had taken it from him at the townhouse, and they hadn’t given it back.
Screw it.
Bullets didn’t kill these demons anyway.
His chest hurt. The slash wounds felt alive.
Duncan’s feet hammered against the pavement as he dodged two taxis and a honking Cadillac to reach the sidewalk. It was dark outside, but he could see like it was daytime—and he remembered that John Cole had night vision. That talent was Duncan’s now, shared for as long as they stayed alive.
Still … here … John groaned from the epicenter of Duncan’s awareness, and the agony in Duncan’s chest and arm and neck eased. Won’t … let you down.
Duncan focused on his legs, his feet, his hands, pumping as hard as he could. The muscles pulled tight across his cooling wounds, aching like a half dozen bayonets were slicing into his throat and pecs. Sidewalk seemed to crumble under his feet as he crushed pavement with each step. Pain made his vision blur, but it didn’t slow him down. He used it, fed off it, and ran faster. Andy and the Mothers were close now, half a block ahead, no more. Another few steps, and Duncan’s lungs seemed to collapse against his ribs.
Keep moving.
Get to Bela.
That’s what he had to do.
Andy and the Mothers turned a sharp right, down a side street next to the brownstone. Duncan followed. The dinar around his neck fried him all over again, but he didn’t waste time knocking it away.
Blood spurted through his T-shirt.
The blood was the wrong color, the wrong scent.
Ahead of him, metal clanged against stone. Women shouted. Water splattered into Duncan’s face. Fire and wind roared around him. The earth beneath New York City rumbled as his pulse jumped in his throat and the wrong-colored blood flowed stronger, too cool and sticky to be real.