by Anna Windsor
The Rakshasa energy was so obvious and strong, blasting through the numbness in her mind and heart. She pulled herself to standing again, then staggered across the cleared patch in the debris, toward Panthera.
Oh, yeah. A lot of elemental traces now. Some thin—the new demons? Three thick—the oldest Rakshasa? One of those thickest of all—
Strada.
Bela stared at the trace, at his tracks all across Panthera’s ruins. Old ones and new ones. Lighter and darker.
She forced her feet to move toward the darker tracks. A steady stream of them, leading toward Times Square.
She followed them, doing what she could with her power to keep her body going, but really, she didn’t care about that, as long as she stayed alive long enough to do what needed to be done. Hunting Strada … that made sense. She couldn’t help anyone here, because there was no one to help—Goddess, no, she couldn’t think about that. No. But she could hunt. With everything Bela was made of, everything she had left inside her, she would not let this demon get away to kill more people.
She’d run a sword through that bastard cat’s heart, rip off his ugly white head, set him on fire, and blow him to eternity.
After that, she’d let herself think.
After that, she’d let herself truly understand that she’d lost Duncan and her quad and her friends.
After that, the pain could kill her, and she knew it would.
“You took everything away from me.” She couldn’t hear herself, but talking made her feel more clearheaded and put her crushing grief to the side—at least for a while. “Now it’s my turn.”
Bela tucked her copper charm inside her leathers so it touched her skin. Then she gripped her sword with her only functional hand and followed Strada’s tracks. Her legs kept moving even though her ribs and arms burned as if fire Sibyls had attacked her. Her feet kept falling, one in front of the other, long after she lost all sense of where she was going or how long she’d been walking.
Times Square came and went, just a blur of lights and cars and night crowds and sounds that should have been there but weren’t. The three thick traces separated at Avenue of the Americas. Smart move. The fuckers.
Bela tracked Strada north. Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall—bright, happy-looking, so many people. Everything seemed the same, but nothing was. Bela moved and hurt and bled and healed what she could, what she had to.
At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Strada’s trail got a lot stronger.
Bela had to let go of her sword hilt on Park Avenue. She ripped at the sleeve of her leathers with her teeth, tearing a strip long enough to bind her broken arm to her weapons belt. Keeping it still eased the agony some. The pain that was left kept her awake.
Her mind chipped and dug back through the day. She tried to avoid seeing faces. Duncan. Andy. Dio. Camille. Oh, sweet universe, why them, all of them and not her? Riana, Cynda, Merilee—her friends, but some of the Sibyls who died tonight, she knew only their names and faces, nothing about their lives. Half the OCU officers, she’d never met. Her thoughts circled through all the painful things, finally landing where she wanted. In the townhouse basement. When she and Duncan had studied the maps and operation plans and all the information Nick, Creed, and Riana’s triad had gathered about Samuel Griffen’s properties. One of them was on East Fifty-ninth, near Lexington. If Strada thought Panthera was the only location compromised, he might take shelter there.
Goddess, she hurt. More earth energy soothed her, but it lasted for just a minute. Strada’s tracks glowed so brightly now, they hurt her eyes.
Why did the moon seem so dim?
Bela put her hand on the bricks at the mouth of an alley and bent over, trying not to collapse.
He’d turned in here—but why?
Because he knows.
He knows somebody’s following him.
Her lips pulled away from her teeth.
What he doesn’t know is who.
Dull traffic sounds made their way into her consciousness, seemingly miles away. Her ears and the rest of her senses woke up a little. Her Sibyl body was healing itself, no matter what she wanted.
Bela drew on the earth enough to stand. She slipped her fingers inside her leathers and retrieved the copper charm. When she squeezed it tightly and used what little earth power she had, she could sense people moving nearby, and plants, and animals. All that life touching the earth, all around her. And in the alley …
Strada was waiting.
Bela’s ears buzzed, and her hearing grew more acute. The strains of a Pink Floyd song drifted to her.
Daddy, what else did you leave for me …
Yeah. She could work with that.
Duncan and Andy, they were all about gospel and folk. Camille liked modern stuff, and Dio had her classical collection. Screw all of that. Give her hard rock. Classic rock. Pink Floyd was just fine with her.
All in all, you’re just a …
Vicious, vengeful fury powered Bela’s walk into that alley.
… another brick in the wall …
With each step she took, her mind worked with the copper charm, moving through it, getting the measure of it, understanding it down to the atoms and molecules, and shaping it with her pain. Then she put it in her mouth, to keep it touching her, and settled it between her cheek and gum.
When she found that bastard—
But there he was.
Bela blinked, not trusting her vision, and some of her powerful fury drained out of her.
At the walled end of the alley, at the terminus of the tracks she’d been following, stood a man, not a demon.
Tall and muscular—black eyes, black hair, tanned, expensive gray silk suit. She couldn’t tell if the man had Hispanic or Italian heritage, or maybe Native American or Middle Eastern. Whatever it was, it made him easy on the eyes, if you didn’t count the poisoned green energy clinging to his skin.
Rakshasa could imitate human form, but only for a few seconds. That’s what Dio had told them, Bela remembered. So she gave it a few seconds. Blood dripped down her broken arm, and her good arm, too. She tasted a little in her mouth and spit it out.
The man stayed a man.
Yet the longer she stared at him, the more she could see a hint of white tiger, a suggestion of golden-eyed monster.
“We have a natural human form.” Strada’s voice was lightly accented and deep in this form, not full of growls and snarls. “We can hold it without limits, unlike shapes we borrow. Does mine please you?”
Hearing the bastard talk jarred Bela out of her shock and brought her back to her purpose. She drew enough earth energy to catch her breath and slow her bleeding again. “You killed them. My quad, my lover—my friends.”
Strada laughed, and if Bela hadn’t known what he was, if she hadn’t been listening with her ever-healing Sibyl hearing, she would have found it natural. Even attractive. “Your loved ones killed themselves, or rather you did, when you attacked my business and my family. The trap I used—old and basic, but very effective.”
Bela smiled at him, and she waited until he smiled back.
Then she said, still smiling, “I’m going to kill you now, and I’m going to make you suffer.”
Strada moved so quickly he seemed to be at the alley’s end in one second and standing in front of her the next. His iron-strong hands grabbed both of her elbows, and the pain of his grip on her fractured arm made her hiss and groan.
The demon-man let go of her good arm, grabbed her sword hilt and weapons belt, and ripped them away from her. He threw them against the alley wall.
Bela glared at him as her sword clattered to the ground. “You look like a man, but you still smell like cat piss.”
He laughed again and ran a thumb along her cheek. “Such a beautiful creature.” With his other hand, he squeezed her broken arm and made her scream. “All the Sibyls, so lovely. So powerful. Could I turn you, I wonder?”
He tried the thumb trick again, and Bela moved her head fast enough to
bite him and draw some of his foul-tasting blood, which she spit in his face. He snatched his hand back, pulling at her wounded arm until she let out another shout of pain.
Strada’s expression was part angry, part intrigued. “Now I understand, my dear. The real question is, if I turned you, could I control you?”
Claws brushed her cheek instead of fingers.
Bela lowered her head, fighting waves of revulsion.
The claws moved to the back of her neck, and the suited man’s chest she was staring at shifted slowly to a broad swath of white tiger fur.
She shifted the copper charm to her tongue and reached deep, deep into the ground with her terrasentience.
When Strada squeezed her broken arm again, Bela tore a gout of energy from the center of the earth and spit the charm at the Rakshasa bastard with all the force of a volcano blowing its cone.
His golden demon eyes widened, and his tiger mouth opened.
His paws fell away from Bela and patted his chest, like he couldn’t quite believe the blood spreading across his fur.
“Elementally treated copper.” Bela smiled as he fell to his knees. “Hurts like a bitch when it pierces your heart, doesn’t it?”
She lifted her foot and kicked him over, then limped to the alley wall and picked up her sword. She had to use her teeth to get it out of the sheath, and by the time she got back to Strada, she was so dizzy she could barely keep on her feet.
That was okay. She didn’t have to. Not for what she had in mind.
She sank down and straddled the big tiger bastard as best she could, then lifted her sword until the tip rested above his wound. Her own blood dripped down the hilt and blade, adding lighter red to the dark maroon.
“I know you’re probably healing, Strada. I know I don’t have much time before you can move your arms and legs again—but my sword’s made of elementally locked metal, too.”
She rammed the blade into his heart, making him twitch and bellow.
Bela waited until he healed enough to look her in the face with his furious golden eyes. She made sure to give him her best smile. “That was for Duncan Sharp. I loved him very much.”
Her next blow was for Andy, and the one after that for Dio, and the one after that for Camille.
It wasn’t until she started on Riana’s triad that her dizziness started to get the best of her. Earth energy wasn’t helping much anymore. It was harder to make her thrusts, and she figured she’d just have to let the beheading avenge all the other Sibyls and OCU officers. She blacked out for a second and almost fell off him, but caught herself—apparently in time.
Strada lay absolutely still beneath her, and she pressed the sword blade to his furry white throat.
His hand shot up and grabbed her chin, shoving her so hard she flew backward and slammed into the alley wall, sitting hard on her ass.
Her sword fell out of her hand.
Her head slammed into stone as she tried to breathe.
No air.
Total agony all over her body, pure and blazing and killing.
No earth energy. She couldn’t draw any strength at all.
Strada loomed over her, roaring.
He raised his claws—and a big, muscled arm slammed around his neck, jerking him into a choke hold.
Bela knew she was dying, and now she was having visions.
Wonderful visions of Duncan, alive and yelling as the energy from his dinar flared and drove demon and man apart.
Bela’s vision darkened, then Duncan’s hand cupped her cheek.
“Angel,” he said. “You scared the hell out of me.”
(37)
Thank God Bela was alive, but she didn’t look good. That arm—and she was bleeding badly from wounds he couldn’t even see. He kissed her lips very gently, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Love … you …” she whispered.
“I love you, too.” He thought about picking her up but figured he couldn’t get her past Strada before the demon got up again. Duncan had used his dinar and John’s help to track Bela here after he fought his way out of the rubble. Her quad was coming, but Creed and Nick and the Astaroths were temporarily out of commission.
Strada snarled, and Duncan knew the demon was on his feet.
He jumped to his feet as well and put himself between Bela and the demon, trapping Strada in the walled end of the alley. His slash wounds burned like somebody had poured scalding water across them, and his chest and neck and arm had hair now, golden orange and black, like Bengal tigers he had seen at the zoo.
Strada gazed at him and growled. “You are turning, Duncan Sharp. More my pride than human now.”
“I’ll stay alive long enough to kill you—and I’ll rip off my own head before I join your pride.” God, he hated saying that word, and this demon, even more than the Rakshasa who’d cut him.
“Turn her.” Strada pointed to Duncan. “You can still have her, and all of our powers, too. Cut her or bite her, or let me, and we will leave this place together.”
Duncan shifted his weight, snatched Bela’s sword off the ground, and gave the Rakshasa a come-here gesture with his fingers. “Try to touch her. Just try. I’m begging you.”
“The power of your dinar has weakened since last we met.” Strada came closer to him and stood about four feet away. “Is it failing as you turn?”
Duncan held Bela’s sword and didn’t let his expression change. He and John weren’t projecting through the coin anymore, because if he used that kind of energy again, he’d go demon pretty much instantly.
But failing as he turned … ?
No idea, John told him. If he comes any closer, kill him.
“Thanks,” Duncan muttered.
Sword through the heart, off with the head. He’d have to find a lighter and some wind—
The flash of red lights and the screech of tires sounded like cavalry horns to Duncan as a blue-and-white NYPD squad car spun to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Leather-clad Sibyls bailed out of it, limping and swearing and staggering. Camille had her big, honking sword drawn, and Dio’s wind held Andy up, and Andy’s dart gun had been mashed all to shit, but here they were.
“Get Bela—” Duncan started to say, but Strada lunged for him.
Duncan drove Bela’s sword into the Rakshasa’s blood-streaked chest.
Strada’s paw swiped at the dinar, grabbed it, and twisted.
The sword pierced the demon’s heart, but he yanked Duncan down as he fell, arms and legs and paws locked into position.
Duncan tried to move but couldn’t. Not at all. The coin’s energy wasn’t his anymore, and it wasn’t John’s.
It belonged to the Rakshasa.
Duncan was just as immobile as Strada—and he was choking. Spots danced in his eyes. His tongue seemed five sizes too big.
Strada’s thoughts jammed through the dinar into his mind, and he heard them like a tiger’s roar.
Welcome to death. It only makes you stronger.
(38)
Nightmares blended into dreams as healing water energy splashed through Bela.
“Come on, honey.” Andy’s voice. “I gotta get you out of here. If I let you go, I’m scared you’re not gonna make it.”
Andy’s voice?
How could that be?
But it was Andy. Bela could feel her gentle touch and smell her crisp ocean scent. She sensed Andy crouched beside her, pouring power into every pounding, aching wound.
Then Dio’s voice rang out, strong as the wind. “Camille! Get the demon!”
Bela’s eyes flew open in time to see Strada choking Duncan with his own chain, and Camille sailing past her, shamshir already swinging toward the demon’s head.
Camille brought her blade down, but elemental energy cracked, and the shamshir spun out of her grip as she stumbled to the side, fighting for balance.
Duncan’s face got darker, and his eyes closed.
Camille spun toward them again, hesitated, then dropped to her knees beside Duncan and the Rakshasa. Tin
y lasers of firelight broke across her fingers.
Bela tried to scream at her, tried to tell her not to do it, but she had no strength to make a sound. Dio did yell, as did Andy, but it was too late.
Camille grabbed the dinar with both hands.
Strada and Duncan and Camille jerked like they’d been hit by lightning.
“Do something!” Andy screeched at Dio, but Dio seemed frozen in place ten feet from the now-glowing demon and Duncan and Camille.
A second later, they were all golden.
Energy spun around the three of them like a swirling sandstorm, natural and perverted, dark and light, and shades in between. For a moment, Bela thought she saw four people instead of three. She blinked against the glare, heart hammering, broken arm throbbing with each frantic beat. The air smelled like hot desert winds and fresh blood.
“Duncan.” She tried to push herself toward him, but Andy held her down and kept up the flow of healing energy.
“Be still,” Andy said. “I’ll be damned if I’m losing more than one of you tonight.”
Something like lightning did strike then, only it came from inside the golden storm, not the sky, and it didn’t touch Bela at all.
Duncan fell toward the back alley wall and curled into a ball. Breathing. Bela made sure of that.
Camille still knelt beside Strada with the dinar in her hands.
Strada had the chain—but he had turned into a man again.
“Don’t let him fool her,” Bela whispered to Andy, desperate to be heard. “He’ll kill her!”
Strada gazed up at Camille, reverent, disbelieving, like he was seeing his own personal deity in the flesh.
Camille stared down at him, apparently stunned.
Strada pulled the dinar out of Camille’s hands, shook out the chain—then slipped the necklace over her head. The coin crackled and sparked, then settled against Camille’s leathers like it had found a new home.
Andy’s hands pressed harder into Bela’s good arm. “Dio!” she yelled again, but Dio was in some other world, staring at the back of the alley.