by Anna Windsor
Maybe Strada had passed by this place and kept going.
Camille inched forward.
If Strada had friends with him, she didn’t plan to fight them all alone. She’d follow and stay close enough to track him to his lair. Then she’d alert her quad and the rest of the Sibyls in the city, they’d make a battle plan with the OCU, and they’d take down the Strada and the rest of his Rakshasa once and for all.
If he was alone, though—
At the end of the alley, Camille stopped and stared.
Fresh paw prints glistened on the far side of a puddle.
Big paw prints.
Then human prints, like the paws had slowly morphed into human feet, shoes and all.
Strada in his human form.
He had dark green eyes.
Camille gripped the scimitar’s hilt so tightly the ivory patterns dug into her hand. No way. She wasn’t going there. Not now, damnit!
Those eyes should have been black. She was positive about that, based on what her own eyes had seen and the drawings one of her quad had made.
It didn’t matter.
Soon enough those eyes would be nothing but dust and ashes on the street, and it wouldn’t matter what color they were.
Camille eased out of the alley.
The dinar suddenly scalded the skin on her chest.
She yelped, grabbed for the coin—and powerful arms seized her and snatched her back into the alley’s cover.
Camille’s pulse rocketed. She rammed her elbows back and hit a hard wall of muscle as someone—something—hauled her behind one of the alley’s dumpsters. A massive hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off all sound, but leaving her able to breathe.
Human, her instincts told her. Sort of. Definitely male.
Totally, completely male.
The coin around her neck felt like it might explode from the heat it was generating.
Camille tried to bite the hand over her mouth. Tried to stomp the man’s instep.
Nothing.
He had her tight and controlled, like he’d done this hundreds of times. She couldn’t move except to blink.
“Don’t fight me, beautiful,” said the voice of the thing from Central Park—the thing that was probably Strada. The sound was nothing but a masculine rasp against her ear, and the hand against her mouth felt hot enough to thaw glaciers. “You won’t win.”
Camille drew hard on her elemental fire, using the already overheated dinar to expand her pyrogenesis. Flames broke out along her neck and hissed down her arms, sizzling holes in her battle leathers and sending a shock of alarm through her Sibyl tattoo. Smoke poured around her, blurring her vision—but the asshole holding her managed not to let go.
“Keep it up,” the man murmured, so quiet no one else in New York could have heard him. “I like it hot.”
How the hell was he still holding her?
Camille couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense any elemental essence that would help him absorb her fire, but—
She shifted her energy into pyrosentience, stabbing at his flesh with focused beams of blue flame. He didn’t react to her probing, but he didn’t stop it, either. This time she got off a good blast, enough energy to finally tell her what she needed to know.
He wasn’t demon. Wasn’t Rakshasa. Not Strada, but he didn’t feel completely human, did he? Well, the muscled arms, the way-ripped pecs pressing into her shoulders—those were definitely all man.
His energy, though …
Before Camille could struggle again, the man’s grip tightened. “Watch—and knock off the fire, or we’re both dead.”
Something in the man’s tone made Camille react immediately, pulling her energy back so fast the effort nearly made her dizzy. The smoke around them drifted away, blending with the wet walls and fire escapes until Camille had a clear view of the end of the alley even though she was fairly certain no one on the other side of the dumpster could see her.
The dinar around her neck stayed red-hot, then seemed to get even hotter.
Just outside the alley’s walls, a dark-haired man in a camel-colored silk suit strode into view. Average height, decent build, light tan—he could have been of almost any heritage, and nothing about him stood out as unusual or memorable. He stopped near the alley’s mouth and glanced at his watch.
When he looked up, the pain from the hot coin on her skin made Camille yelp against the hand covering her mouth.
The man’s black eyes burned with an inhuman fire at the center, and the foul, perverted energy that rolled off him and hit her full in the face would have driven her to her knees if her captor hadn’t held her upright.
Rakshasa.
Eldest.
But Camille didn’t recognize him.
All she knew was, this one wasn’t Strada.
He’s so powerful. How could that be?
Another figure approached, human in appearance, likely male, wearing jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt. He came toward the demon waiting for him without a hint of fear, and didn’t hesitate or shrink back when the demon growled at him.
“Nice threads,” the human said.
The demon growled again, this time louder.
Again, the human didn’t seem to have any reaction to the threat. “Come with me,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”
The demon kept growling, but it gave a quick, sharp nod. Then it followed the man in the sweatshirt away from the alley and down the long, darkened side street.
The heat in the dinar started to drain away, and Camille realized the coin had been reacting to the presence of Rakshasa—or maybe just to danger, or more likely to the presence of such concentrated perverted energy.
When the demon and its companion had been out of sight for a few seconds, Camille’s captor eased his grip—a little. “That was Tarek,” he whispered in her ear. “Eldest, and the pride’s culla now that Strada’s gone.”
Strada—gone?
If Camille could have turned around and challenged the asshole holding on to her, she would have. How could Strada be gone? She’d just been tracking him—but if Tarek was Rakshasa and Eldest, it might have been his trace she had been following.
“Tarek never valued taking human form before he took charge of the pride,” the man said. “Now he’s gotten good at it. Calls himself Corst Brevin, and stays away from fur and claws most of the time. Bad for business.”
Camille didn’t try to figure out how the man knew any of this, but her Sibyl instincts told her he was telling the truth. For reasons she couldn’t begin to explain, she not only believed everything he was saying but had no sense that he intended to hurt her. In fact, the whole time they’d been watching the Rakshasa, she’d felt safe with him. She had even felt protected.
Not that she needed protecting.
“I need to understand—are you hell-bent on feeding yourself to the Rakshasa?” The man’s voice sounded teasing yet serious, and Camille recognized the long vowels and rhythms of a Southern drawl. “Is that why you keep coming out here without your fighting group, playing with fire, and trying to sneak up on a culla? I’m beginning to think you’ve got a death wish, beautiful.”
The man took his hand off Camille’s mouth, and her words flew out in a rush. “Let me go, you son of a bitch—and who the hell are you, anyway?”
She tried to jerk herself free again, but he held her just as tightly. She caught his scent. Light, and spicy, and familiar. Her head started to swim.
“You know who I am,” he told her for the third time, and his bass rumble sent ripples of gooseflesh across her neck. “Tell me my name before I let you turn around.”
Camille shoved against his stone-strong arms.
“Tell me my name,” he said, his lips so close to her ears that his warm breath gave her crazy shivers as rain started falling again in tiny, tapping drops.
Golden light …
“John Cole.” The name spilled out of her even though she felt played all over again. Elemental energy blasted up from
her depths, blazing through the dinar and covering her entire body with red-orange fire. “Now let me go before I burn you to the ground.”
The strong arms pinning her behind the dumpster turned her loose, and Camille sprang away from its metal wall. She drew her scimitar as she wheeled to finally, finally get a close-up look at the man who had captured her so easily and completely—and her blade burst into roaring flames, channeling her gut-level shock and disbelief.
The dark green eyes she remembered so well, too well. But the black hair, the tanned skin, the tall, muscled frame and that handsome, arrogant face—no more confusion.
Not now.
Not ever again.
“Strada.” The snarl tore out of her as she lunged forward through the rain, but the bastard used the dumpster for cover to keep her from getting off a good swing.
“I’ve got Strada’s body.” Strada made no effort to fight back, but he looked loose and ready to get out of her way. “You gave it to me. You know I’m telling you the truth.”
Camille screamed with rage, wishing she could scrub off the feel of the demon’s arms around her and wash out the lingering tingle of his deep voice in her ear. She used her shoulder and her Sibyl’s strength to shove the dumpster sideways.
Strada kept pace with the dumpster’s movements, staying just out of her range. “Strada was dying. You’d have finished him off if you’d taken his head and cooked his remains, but you helped me out of Duncan’s head and gave me what was left of Strada—with the dinar.”
Golden light …
Camille shoved the dumpster again and got an angle on the smooth-talking jerk, but the thought of that golden light, of that explosive energy moving through her as she held the dinar … She hesitated.
Three other Sibyls came roaring into the alley from its other end.
Bela led the way. The earth Sibyl had her serrated blade drawn, and her wavy black hair streamed out from beneath her zipped leather face mask as she ran.
Andy wasn’t wearing her face mask, but she had her underwater dart pistol drawn. Puddle water and rivulets from the buildings around her swept into waves, soaking her red curls and washing grime off the alley walls.
Dio had her face mask off, too, and she was walking. Her wispy blond hair stirred and swirled around her shoulders as her wind did the running for her, building into towering funnels as she drew her deadly three-sided African throwing knives.
Camille’s heart surged at the sight of her quad, and she knew they were answering the distress call she’d sent them through her tattoo when Strada first grabbed her.
Strada kept the dumpster between him and her onrushing saviors, and his expression never changed. “Next time you take on Tarek, beautiful, make sure you bring your friends. They’re almost as dangerous as you.”
He moved so fast she barely saw him go, pivoting and leaping into the darkness of the side street.
“No!” Camille charged after him. “You are not getting away from me a third time.”
But he was getting away. The side street was still and quiet and absolutely empty.
Camille ran a couple of steps, then let out a fire-laced roar, magnified a hundredfold by the dinar around her neck. She spun back toward the alley, stormed into it, kicked the dumpster so hard it smashed into the wall, then hauled off and hacked a corner off the bin. The severed corner clattered against the wet pavement, still glowing red from the heat channeled through her blade, and the acrid smell of melting metal filled the air.
Bela got to her first and grabbed one of her arms before she could lay into the dumpster again. Bela had pulled her face mask off and sheathed her own sword, and her dark eyes were wide with concern. “Was that who I think it was? Were you just fighting with Strada?”
“Something like that.” Camille lowered her smoking scimitar and gently pulled herself free from Bela’s grip.
“The Rakshasa are back in New York City.” Andy stopped beside Bela and let the waves she’d brought with her crest against the wounded dumpster. “Fuck me. That’s all we need.”
Dio’s wind smashed directly into Camille’s face, pasting her lips to her teeth and pelting her with pebbles as it passed. By the time Camille’s eyes stopped tearing enough for her to see, Dio had stopped in front of her and had her finger right in Camille’s face.
“What the hell were you doing out here without us?” Dio’s gray eyes crackled with energy, and somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled. “I’m the broom of this quad, but you better not leave me sweeping up your body parts because you did something jackass stupid!”
Dio jerked her finger away, then let her arm fall to her side. Camille glanced from Dio to Bela to Andy, seeing their concern and their frustration with the chance she had taken. All of them, Camille included, had suffered terrible losses in their pasts, and what she’d done tonight—what she’d been doing for months—no doubt brought back fear, mistrust, and worry for everybody.
“I was tracking him,” Camille admitted. “Tracking Rakshasa.”
That sounded lame. She wanted to ram her head into the dumpster. Her quad had finally achieved something that passed as a fighting rhythm, and now she’d thrown them all off again. “I’m the one who let Strada go. It’s my responsibility to find him and kill him—and besides, I thought I needed the practice with my pyrosentience to be more useful to all of you. I’m sorry.”
Andy frowned, her pretty face so atypically serious that Camille couldn’t keep looking at her. “It’s a great thing, working on your pyrosentience,” Andy said, “but using projective elemental energy is dangerous all by itself, and you’ve been doing it all alone, then adding Rakshasa to the equation. I’m getting better at this whole water Sibyl healing thing I’m supposed to be able to do, but I can’t sew you back together if you melt yourself or let a cat-demon eat you for dinner.”
“I know—” Camille started, but Bela cut her off.
“When I chose you as the pestle for my quad, I knew you weren’t strong with pyrogenesis, and I didn’t care.” Bela’s tone stayed even, but Camille heard the fear-driven anger in each syllable and understood it. “Making fire on command, that’s not what’s important to me or any of us. If you take a risk like this again, we’re going to have problems.”
“I’m sorry,” Camille repeated, wishing she could find something better, or some promise that might make a difference. If that threat had come from Dio or even Andy, it would have stung Camille, but from Bela, the mortar of her quad, the woman who held them all together, it cut like a blade against her throat.
For a few moments nobody said anything.
Then Dio hissed out a breath and tapped the throwing knives sheathed on her belt. “Yeah, well, next time we come face-to-face with that ass-wipe demon, he’s going down.”
Andy grumbled something Camille didn’t quite get, but she caught the part about chopping Strada’s dick off before they moved on to hacking off his head.
Bela put out her hand. “Come on. We need to call the OCU about the Rakshasa, and get the word out to other Sibyls that the demons are active in the city again. Then we need to get home without waking Mrs. Knight next door and get some sleep. We’re back on patrol—together—in about fourteen hours.”
Camille took Bela’s hand, but as they started for home, she couldn’t help glancing down the dark side street where Strada had made his escape.
Or … it might have been John Cole.
Don’t be stupid. Of course it was Strada, screwing with you to get more intel on the Sisterhood.
Or something like that.
Maybe he wanted the Sibyls to kill Tarek so he could have his pride back without a fight. Really, Camille didn’t know what game the Rakshasa was playing, and she didn’t give a shit. She was through falling for his lies.
Flames broke out in her mind, even though no fire found its way to her skin and no smoke puffed from her shoulders in the dark, rainy night.
Like Dio said, the next time Camille crossed paths with that tiger bastard
, the demon was going down.
( 8 )
October
Tarek sat beside Griffen in the opulent high-rise conference room, taking in the shades of mauve and taupe in the wallpaper and expensive accents and paintings. The oak chairs and long, rectangular conference table had been polished to a perfect shine along with the hardwood floor, leaving a faint scent of lemon in the air. Even the drapes, blinds, and windows had been rendered spotless.
Pity.
Much of it would have to be replaced when this meeting concluded.
Tarek realized that since the death of his beloved oldest brother, Strada, he had begun to abhor waste of any sort, even blinds and curtains that would be ruined, or hours spent cleaning a room that was about to be soiled so badly it would have to be stripped to studs and rebuilt to scrub away the filth.
He glanced down at the dark silk suit he had chosen to highlight his tanned skin and dark hair. Strada had always preferred silk. Tarek had thought his brother foolish for his choice of clothing—for wearing clothing at all and staying in human form so frequently.
Now that he was culla, he understood Strada’s reasoning.
With Strada gone, and with the damage done by the cursed John Cole and the Sibyls, the Eldest Rakshasa left in the world numbered only twenty-one. Tarek felt incredibly responsible for each of those lives. If he and his true brothers were to thrive in this modern landscape after a millennium of captivity in the Valley of the Gods, they had to find allies, strategies, and safety. They had to both blend in with and stand out among the humans teeming across the planet, and they had to learn how to better use humans to achieve Rakshasa goals of wealth and power … and survival. Remaining in human form helped Tarek understand his potential friends and enemies much better, and presenting himself in a handsome flesh-and-blood shell made negotiations much easier than showing up with fur, fangs, and claws.
Most of the time.
“Three minutes.” Griffen smoothed his short blond hair and adjusted his own brown suit—also silk, but low-grade, and not among his favorites. The sorcerer knew they would be sacrificing much of what they wore today, but the means would be worth the end. “Are you ready?”