by Anna Windsor
“Hey.” Duncan gently turned her to face him. He inclined his head toward the front seat and lowered his voice so Blackjack couldn’t hear him. “I don’t know what you’re worried about, but don’t. Whatever might go down at the townhouse, I’ve got your back—and hers.”
Bela’s expression softened. She moved her fingers from her own cheek to his. “I’ve fought beside some of the best warriors in the world, but watching you face down a horde of Rakshasa demons with nothing but your bare hands and a dinar on a chain—that was worth seeing.”
Duncan smiled at her. “I’ve never seen anybody use a sword the way you did. Pretty mean kick you’ve got, too.”
Bela glanced at Andy. “I’d do anything to save them.”
Her voice caught, and her chest hitched.
Duncan took Bela’s chin in his hand and turned her face back to his so that she could see the truth in his eyes. “Then so would I.”
He kissed her then, and settled her head under his chin. As far as he was concerned, he could hold her forever, if he had forever left.
(33)
Bela got out of the Jeep with Duncan, and they stood with Jack Blackmore and Andy on the sidewalk outside the safety fence at Headcase Quarters, waiting for Bela’s SUV to arrive. The Brent brothers were probably steering more slowly and carefully through the streets of New York City because they were driving the Mothers.
The night’s energy had gone back to a more normal rhythm, and Bela didn’t have any sense of the Rakshasa tracking them or following them. They probably didn’t have to track, though. If they knew about the brownstone, the demons probably had a fair grasp of where all the Sibyls in New York City lived. She sent out a few tendrils of earth energy, using her terrasentience to be sure they weren’t about to be attacked again, and got nothing.
For now.
Bela glanced at Duncan beside her, at the stains on his shirt, and realized his demon wounds were open at the top and bottom, weeping blood into the cotton. Her heart squeezed so hard her knees almost caved.
He saw her looking and took her hand in his before she could touch the slashes. “They got worse when we stopped to join the battle, and when John and I yelled—and when we magnified the dinar’s shield to cover all the Sibyls.”
Bela let earth energy slip from her fingertips, and the bleeding slowed to almost nothing. “Projective energy,” she whispered, relieved and miserable at the same time. “It magnifies demon energy like everything else. Camille told you not to use it.”
“I thought she told me not to walk through any mirrors.” Duncan’s grin let her know he understood—and probably had understood when he chose to do it, to save her life and everyone else’s.
Bela rested her palm on Duncan’s cheek, fighting the blistering, aching agony of knowing time was slipping away from them even faster now. She wanted to touch him more, all over. She wanted days, weeks, months of making love to him, but she couldn’t have that. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“The Mothers cleared me in the Patterson murder,” he said. “And they worked things out with John so I’m in control now, for sure. They—”
“I don’t need to know.” Bela drew her fingers across his face and lips, then let her arm relax against her side as he gave her a confused look. “I never doubted you, Duncan.”
She had to turn away from him then, because rage from the battle had gone to war with grief over what was happening to him, and she didn’t want him to see her cry. A few yards away, Andy walked away from Jack Blackmore. Her face had gone pale, and she looked tense enough to blow up fire hydrants.
Rage boiled over the sadness inside Bela.
She strode away from Duncan, went to face Andy, put both hands on Andy’s shoulders, and looked her straight in the eyes. “We’re here to regroup, and then we’re leaving. You do not have to stay here.”
Andy’s gaze flickered to the townhouse. “They’ll try to make us. Blackmore’s already on about it. The Mothers, the OCU—everybody will back him up.”
“Screw them all.” Bela shook inside, hot all over, then freezing the next second, but outside, she heard herself sounding calmer and more definite. “This ends tonight, because we’re going to end it. You and Camille and Dio and me. Are you with me?”
Andy’s eyebrows lifted, and her color perked up. “Fuckin’ A. Just tell me when.”
Thunder whickered in the distance, but the night sky was clear and full of stars. Before Bela could give much thought to it, a quick squeal of brakes announced the arrival of her SUV. Bela and Andy turned toward the sound, and Bela saw her beat-up vehicle lining itself up behind the Jeep on the curb.
The Brent brothers bailed out of the SUV as Dio and Camille helped the Mothers disembark. Calvin Brent looked like he’d been caught in a Mixmaster, with his wind-twisted clothes and blown hair. The taller brother, Saul, had a few holes singed across his black NYPD jacket.
Bela gave Mother Keara a quick glare as the old woman marched up to her, letting off a light fog of smoke. “Was that necessary?”
“I told the fool I had to sneeze.” Mother Keara rubbed one watering eye. “It’s not my fault yer humans are so blessed slow. Those cat-demons make me sniffly.”
She stalked off toward the townhouse and sneezed again, scorching the sidewalk. Mother Anemone flowed along behind her, emanating peace and a certain breezy disapproval. Mother Yana hobbled by almost at the same pace, back to needing Camille’s support since losing her cane in the battle with the Rakshasa. The ancient Mother’s frailness came and went, but Bela didn’t question it. When she was that old, she’d hobble whenever she felt like it.
Camille searched Bela’s face as she went by, and Andy’s. She slowed to a stop. “We’ll take care of this, right, Bela?”
Bela gave her arm a squeeze. “Absolutely.”
“Let me get her settled.” Camille jerked her head back toward Dio, who was still standing with both hands on the SUV’s back door, head turned away from Bela. “You handle that one.”
Shit.
A big knot tied itself in Bela’s stomach.
What now?
Actually, she didn’t give a shit.
Bela had had all she could take of Dio’s temper, and all she could take of Dio’s rejection. That would end tonight, too, one way or another. Her rage drained away into a cool, earthy anger, and she let it fill her until she felt ready.
“Don’t follow me,” Bela told Andy as she walked away, heading for Dio. “And keep Duncan and Blackmore back, too.”
“On it,” Andy said, and water energy built at Bela’s back as she moved away.
When Bela reached the SUV, Dio didn’t raise her head.
Bela looked at the sky and then the earth for strength. She was a mortar, the base of her quad. If she couldn’t pull this together—pull them together—then nobody could.
“What do you want from me?” Bela asked Dio, sincerely wanting to know. “Am I supposed to apologize for staying alive tonight? Do you regret knifing that cat and saving me?”
Dio’s head whipped up, and her stormy eyes went wide with horror. Her mouth trembled, and she wailed, “No!”
Then she burst into tears and put her face in her hands.
Bela stood next to her, experiencing something like shellshock.
I so don’t get what’s happening here.
Dio kept crying.
Bela lifted a hand to comfort her, then put it down. Lifted it again.
“Oh, screw this. Screw it all.” She grabbed Dio and jerked her into a firm hug, yanking all the earth power she could to protect herself.
The tooth-cracking blast of wind energy didn’t make her let go. No way. Not this time. “Help me understand, Dio. Make me understand.”
Dio gave her another wind blast. “You’re—you’re invading my personal space.”
“I don’t give a shit.” The power of the earth laced through Bela’s words, meeting the air energy pushing toward her with incontrovertible force. “Let me in, Dio.”
Dio gasped and went stiff in her grasp. Bela tried to ease up on the energy she was channeling, but it wasn’t easy. Dio started to shake, and thunder exploded over Central Park, less than a mile away. Her fists closed on the shoulders of Bela’s leathers, and she sobbed again, like her heart was shattering.
Bela cried with her, over a thousand different things, but more than that, she held on, and kept holding on, until the storm eased and Dio released her stranglehold on Bela’s arms.
“I almost didn’t,” Dio whispered, pushing both of her hands against the top of her head.
Bela risked leaning back from her so she could see Dio’s face. “You almost didn’t what?”
Dio’s lips trembled. “I almost didn’t save you.”
That shell-shocked feeling hit Bela again, and she didn’t know what to say.
“The wrong move, or even the right one—it might not have been enough, and that fast”—Dio snapped her fingers next to Bela’s ear—“you could have been gone.”
“Oh, honey.” Bela exhaled, her breath rattling. “I know.”
Dio threw her arms around Bela’s neck, and a hot whirling hurricane swept around the two of them. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Bela almost didn’t notice the pebbles smashing into her head with concussion force. She hugged Dio back and anchored her legs to keep them both from blowing over. “We don’t have to be sorry anymore, okay? We just have to be together as a quad, and help each other.”
It took another minute or so, but Dio gradually got herself together, and her wind energy calmed enough that Bela stopped blocking it to save the nearby cars.
“They almost got us,” Dio said as she let Bela go and walked a step or two toward the townhouse, running her fingers through her wispy blond hair. She stopped. Turned to Bela again. “I want to go find them now. I know I could. I know we could.”
“We will.” Bela linked her arm through Dio’s and guided her toward the spot where Andy stood with Duncan and Jack Blackmore. “After we fight it out with the Mothers, the OCU, and the other triads. All of them are going to want to seal us in carbon or some shit, since we’re obviously the Rakshasa’s targets for now.”
“Well, let me go so I can go polish my knives.” Dio broke away from her, and her grin made Bela remember all the scenes of murder Dio had so happily been sketching before the demons attacked.
She and Andy and Blackmore headed into the townhouse, and Bela watched them go as she walked toward Duncan, amazed that Blackmore had been standing next to Andy so long without getting drowned or getting anything broken. Andy might be feeling sorry for him, since he was still getting over those burns.
Duncan let Bela walk all the way up to him, and he seemed to be appraising the dozen or so cuts on her face and neck. “That stuff by the SUV with Dio … was that a good thing?”
Bela pushed herself up on her toes and kissed his cheek, enjoying the scrape of stubble against her lips. “A very good thing.”
Duncan folded her up in his arms and gave her a real kiss, then led her through the gate and up the stairs to the townhouse door.
Before they went inside, Bela stopped, knowing Duncan would stop, too.
Keeping her eyes on the door, she inhaled, trying to calm the sudden racing of her heart. “What you said in the Jeep, that you’d do anything to save my quad … did you mean it?”
“Every word.”
“Okay.” She pushed the door open. “You’re about to get a chance to prove it.”
(34)
Duncan felt like a big sardine in the conference room full of Sibyls, OCU officers, and Mothers—six or seven from each Motherhouse, except Andy’s. He was standing at the head of the room behind a long table, with Blackjack and Bela and her quad. The Mothers massed in robed clumps on the other side, and the Sibyls made a thick wall of black leather between them and the officers. Saul and Calvin Brent hung by the room’s big windows, but Duncan didn’t see Creed or Nick anywhere, or Riana and her triad.
“We’re not staying,” Bela told Blackjack. Again. Louder this time.
She almost backed into Duncan when she spoke, and he steadied her with one hand on the small of her back. On his right, Andy kept twitching, and Duncan knew it was just a matter of time before sprinklers started breaking. Dio and Camille had Andy’s arms to keep her calm, but that only went so far.
Blackjack blew out a breath. His face turned a little redder as he glanced at Duncan. “Sharp, make her see reason.”
Duncan wanted to laugh at Blackjack over that, but he didn’t. “I think she’s seeing reason just fine.”
“Christ, Duncan!” Blackjack reached beet color. “Jeremiah Drake got butchered while we fought those bastards in the alley, and that old lawyer Figg, too. I’ve got a unit on the way to Alsace’s place because everybody you talked to, they’re dead—and you know she’s next.” Blackjack pointed to Bela. Then he pointed to Andy and Dio and Camille. “They’re all next. You’d let them put themselves in harm’s way?”
“Warriors live in harm’s way.” Duncan eased Bela to the side so he could deal with Blackjack more directly. “If Bela and her quad want this fight, then I’ll have their six. What about you?”
Blackjack raised a finger and pointed it toward Duncan’s face. “Sharp, I’ll—”
“What, Blackjack? Take my badge?” Duncan pulled his shield out of his pocket and tossed it on the conference table. “Have at it. I’m dead in a few weeks anyway.”
Goddess, it hurt to hear him say that.
Bela wanted to snatch the badge back off the table and cram it back where it belonged.
No.
No way.
Seeing Duncan give up his badge so easily made everything too real, too final. The shaking started inside her again, the changing and the rearranging, but she didn’t want it, couldn’t stand it—no!
Blackjack’s mouth opened as he lowered his finger, but for a few seconds he didn’t have anything to say. When he got himself focused again, he turned his attention to Bela. “If you’re not comfortable staying here, what about the Sibyl safe houses?”
“No!” Bela banged her hand on the table, and it crunched as though she’d hit it with a sledgehammer. Earth energy rumbled into her voice. “Enough of this shit. They came after my family in our home. Now we’re going after them.”
“All of us,” Camille said, and half the room jumped because they’d never heard her talk so loud.
“With Dio? I wouldn’t advise it.” Merilee Alexander Lowell’s voice came from the conference room door, and Bela almost hit her with an earthquake, it startled her so badly.
A quiet pressed over the room. Ranks of officers and Sibyls parted to let Merilee through. Her expression stayed neutral, but Bela saw sadness and worry in her blue eyes.
Dio let go of Andy and stared at Mother Anemone. “You told her?”
In the group of Greek Mothers, Mother Anemone lowered her head. “We agreed I wouldn’t lie if asked.”
Bela’s gut started a slow roll.
Whatever this was, she wasn’t going to like it, and they didn’t need it. Not now. Shit!
By the time Merilee got to the table, all the air Sibyl Mothers looked uncomfortable. When they didn’t explain, Merilee rested her palm on the table, halfway to Bela. “Dio’s a weather-maker. I didn’t know, because I was gone before she and her sister started training. Motherhouse Greece never should have allowed her to join a fighting group, at least not without warning you first.”
Bela blinked from the shock.
All the thunder …
All the storms in clear skies …
Duncan, Camille, and Andy moved out of the way, and Bela turned to face Dio.
Dio’s face pinched into misery. She looked away.
“A few air Sibyls do more than move air,” Camille murmured to Duncan, sounding awed. “Some have a talent for calling weather, or creating it, but it’s dangerous and unstable. They don’t train it and try not to breed for it—and weather-makers aren’t supposed
to fight.”
Dio smacked her fist against the conference room wall. “I know how to control myself.”
“Your lightning blew out half the windows in this townhouse during Duncan’s healing,” Merilee’s smile was as sad as her eyes. “Control might be an issue—but that’s up to Bela. She just needed to know, for everyone’s safety.”
Bela glanced over her shoulder. Mother Anemone and her fellow Mothers looked unbearably sad. They obviously cared for Dio and hadn’t been able to stand seeing her so alone, grieving herself to death over Devin.
They also didn’t seem about to make a proclamation that Dio couldn’t keep fighting, now that she’d started.
Bela faced Dio again, beginning to let go of the shock.
Dio’s clear gray eyes held so much pain Bela wasn’t sure she could stand it. Finally. Finally she understood the rest of this puzzle.
“I’ve never used it in a fight on purpose, Bela.” Dio’s voice had never sounded so small and vulnerable. “I never would. Please trust me. Please.”
And here it is again. Bela couldn’t stop gazing into Dio’s eyes. One of my own choices, coming back to bite my ass.
But this was a choice she didn’t think she’d ever regret.
She didn’t have to check with Andy and Camille to see what they thought, because she sensed their protective anger as strongly as she felt her own. Duncan had his own energy, like a mountain standing serene in a howling storm, and that buoyed her, too.
“It makes more sense to me now, why you held so tight to your rage over Devin’s loss.” Bela reached up and touched Dio’s soft hair. “The other air Sibyls you trained with, they would have rejected you out of hand once they knew. Your sister was all you had—until now.”
Dio closed her eyes.
When she opened them and smiled, it was like the sun coming out.
Bela squeezed her shoulder, then looked at Duncan and the rest of her quad. “We’re done here. We’ve got some demons to kill.”
Bela went first, making her way from behind the table into the pin-silent room. The path that Merilee had cleared was still open, and the only thing in Bela’s way was Mother Keara. She stood like a stubborn little statue, unmoving but smoking, with green-robed fire Sibyl Mothers on one side and brown-robed earth Sibyl Mothers on the other.