by Anna Windsor
Her body got warm all over, and she felt like five big pieces of Connemara marble had been lifted off her head now that the confusion had ended. All the old arguments she’d been having with herself about whether or not Strada was demon or human now seemed distant and pointless. The man who had saved her, who had held her and brought her home to heal—human. No question in her mind. She never should have doubted herself so much, or punished herself so recklessly.
Hadn’t Ona told her to do what felt right?
Well, it felt right that the thing upstairs wasn’t a thing at all. He was human, and he was a man, a good-looking man named John Cole.
Ona was watching her as if she could read each thought and emotion. Camille didn’t doubt that Ona had gifts she hadn’t begun to understand, but that didn’t bother her as much as Ona’s sudden, sad frown.
“Your man, he’s been a part of many terrible things,” Ona said. “I think they haunt him.”
Camille twitched under her sheets. “He’s not my man. I just helped him out once a while back.”
My man. Interesting thought.
Camille cleared her throat. “I heard he spent most of his life fighting demons. Bela’s husband, Duncan, told us that John Cole gave up his military career and his priesthood to track and kill the Rakshasa because he felt responsible for them being set loose on the world again.”
Ona’s next words flowed out like a pronouncement, one of those things Mothers say that Sibyls don’t get to argue with, except Ona kept telling Camille she wasn’t a Mother at all.
Yeah, right.
“He is responsible for the demons being loose, but only in part.” Ona’s frown deepened. “He’s wise enough to see that, and I think you are, too.” She leaned toward Camille and gestured to the ceiling directly above Camille’s head. “But this next bit, I don’t think—I know. The universe often sends us the weapons we need just in time for us to need them. To defeat the Rakshasa, the Sibyls need John Cole’s help, and the help of those he can bring to the table. Don’t let anything happen to him.”
If Camille had needed any confirmation of her own perceptions, Ona’s opinion was more than enough for her. “Are the Mothers here to see John—or Strada, whoever the hell they think he is? Maybe we can save them some time and him a lot of discomfort.”
“That’s why I was trying to wake you.” Ona slid out of her chair and brushed creases out of her tunic and breeches as she spoke. “Your quad didn’t summon any Mothers save for Andy Myles, who is of course a Mother in her own right, however inexperienced—and already in residence here. Like you and me, your friends seem to have an aversion to involving the Mothers in their affairs if they have other methods of finding out what they need to know.”
Camille felt herself go stiff. “What other methods?”
Ona sighed as if she really didn’t want to say what she had to say—which in and of itself was frightening. “Maggie Cregan and her infernal sword.”
Camille let that sink in as the chimes above her head began a slow, coordinated dirge. The coin around her neck tingled, then started to burn through the sweat on her chest. Her breathing got tight, and restless heat bubbled up from her legs to her chest to her face. She looked at the ceiling of her room, and in her mind, the living room above it filled up with sharks all over again.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered, then shoved back her covers, pushed herself to her feet, and stumbled toward the bedroom door.
( 12 )
This had been his idea, right?
Well, it was a bad idea.
No, no. Bad idea didn’t quite cover it.
Rotten stupid idea was more to the point.
John shifted on the communications platform, but changing position only made his shoulders nearly pop out of their sockets because his arms had been raised high and tight over his head, his elemental cuffs fastened to a hook on the ceiling.
A frigging meat hook anchored in a wooden support beam.
How had he managed to miss that little decorative detail when he visited this place in Duncan Sharp’s head last year? The stupid thing looked even more menacing, reflected in all the weird magic mirrors hanging on the walls around the platform. Some of them were smoking so heavily John expected the pointy, pale face of one of those Disney witches to appear, demanding to know if he was the fairest in all the land.
Well, he was sure as hell the best-trussed.
Chains had been looped through metal rings on the outside of his ankle cuffs, pulled tight and secured to the bottom of the table. As for the fire burning in the small lead-lined lip of the platform—that shit was hot enough to cook what was left of his T-shirt and make his jeans smolder. He knew there was earth energy in that blazing lip, and air, and water—one big extra-powerful additional elemental lock to hold him in place.
“The energy’s strange,” Bela said in a tone like she was talking about something on a microscope slide instead of a chained-up guy who could hear every word she was saying. She was standing right in front of him in her battle leathers, with her black hair pulled back and her dark eyes fixed on his midsection instead of his face. Around her neck, barely visible above the pulled-down zipper of her leather jumpsuit, was a copper charm, a crescent moon, that seemed to have a power all its own.
Dio was on Bela’s right, and Andy had the spot on her left. They had their own crescent moon charms, Dio’s a bright silver and Andy’s a darker shade, like iron. Yeah, definitely energy coming from those things, though John had trouble figuring out what it was. Something shady and kind of disturbing, almost like the charms had some kind of potential that wasn’t being realized. Dio wasn’t smiling anymore, and her wispy blond hair made her look soft and gentle. What a total crock. Even Andy, the redheaded cop turned water Sibyl, seemed halfway ready to cut him open and find out if he really had ribs and blood and a heart on the inside.
Despite the danger from Bela, Dio, and Andy with their strange necklaces, it was the three other women in the room who really concerned John.
John had banked on the quad calling the Mothers to examine him. He had gotten to know a lot about them, especially Mother Keara from Ireland, when he lived in Duncan’s head. He knew what to expect from them, and though Elana believed some of them might have issues with Camille, John knew that most Mothers were tough as hell but rational, fair, and powerful.
For the three Sibyls who had arrived a few minutes ago, rational and fair might not be part of their vocabulary. The East Ranger group seemed like wildcards to him, nomads with no fixed territory, used to living harder than other Sibyl fighting groups. They were standing behind Bela’s group, battle leathers zipped, arms folded, just staring at him, and he could tell they definitely didn’t see him as human.
The earth Sibyl in the group—Bela called her Sheila—had the blackest hair and eyes he had ever seen. The air Sibyl was Karin. She was shorter and stockier than other air Sibyls he’d seen, but her sandy brown hair and blue eyes made her look like the fairest fighter in this Ranger bunch.
The fire Sibyl, though—she was a piece of work.
That one with the redder-than-red hair and freaky-colored jade eyes, John didn’t think he wanted much to do with her. Maggie Cregan looked like a woman who’d enjoy lots of yelling and screaming. She probably carried a spare ball gag in her pocket, and for some reason her sword was making Strada’s essence crawl around in John’s brain and snort like a tripped-out mole.
John studied the sword as best he could in his whip-me-now pose.
Short hilt. Massive blade tucked into its leather sheath. There was something about it, some energy that shouldn’t be there, and it bothered him. A lot.
He could sense all that with Strada’s remnant abilities, and he’d really upped his agility and hand-to-hand fighting skills thanks to Ben and his boys—but when it came to using his demon energy to shatter elemental cuffs and get himself out of this fetching BDSM get-up, John didn’t have a clue how to do it. The cuffs made him feel tired and foggy and stupid, and maybe f
or now that was safer than trying to pull any big escape.
But what would happen if these women hurt him badly enough that he tapped out? Could Strada take over then and do real damage?
John didn’t think the chains and locks could hold a Rakshasa Eldest in tiger form.
Well, that settles it. No tapping out.
He thought about Camille downstairs, unconscious and needing quiet, peaceful time to heal, and his insides burned. He didn’t like to imagine her helpless and alone. She was going to get what she needed no matter what these women tried to pull.
In his time in Duncan’s head, John had learned about Curson demons—the half-breeds. They kept their demon essences under control with a talisman, usually a piece of jewelry. As long as it was on their person, they had control of the demon aspect they carried inside them, end of story. He wished like hell he had some way to bell Strada with a talisman, wrap some piece of gold around his hateful energy and know that as long as John had it, Strada couldn’t do jack shit.
“Her ancestors were executioners,” Dio said, and John realized he was still staring at Maggie Cregan and her weapon. “They all used that sword.”
“Some hanged the condemned,” Maggie corrected with a smile much meaner than Dio’s, “but even they needed a backup weapon.” She drew the sword slowly, almost reverently, like touching it required some sort of negotiation with the energy it carried. “No piece of metal in history has ever been tempered with so much blood and pain. After a while, the blade took on a life of its own, so to speak.”
The sword had markings on it, runes maybe, but when the metal started to glow from the fire energy Maggie was feeding it, John could make out what those runes really were.
People.
Dying people.
One was getting strung up. One beheaded. One drawn and quartered.
There were a lot more. Seemingly more every second.
John really didn’t want to examine all of them, especially the guy who looked like he was being flayed, but the hotter the sword got, the clearer those godawful pictures became.
And then they started moving.
Energy boiled off the sword and blasted across John’s new supernatural instincts, scraping him inside and out.
Sandstorm …
Heat and all, blinding and choking until he barely caught a whole breath.
This was like the desert. This was like the war.
This was not good.
John gripped the chains above his cuffs. His eyes watered from the abrasive heat. He saw the Sibyls in prism, moving into a circle around the table, Maggie front and center with that sick sword. The flames on the table jumped higher. All he could smell was sulfur and hot air, burning against his mouth and nose.
More energy swelled through the room. Lots of it. Earth, air, fire, and water, pulled toward the Sibyls, flowing out from the Sibyls, changing and shifting until the flexing waves of power blotted out the details of the room. The world around John got five-day-bender blurry, and John couldn’t make out who was who or who was where. They shifted past him in brief glimpses, red or yellow or black for their hair, a dash of leather, a flash of silver, and they kept moving. Even in his teen years, John had never had a trip like this.
Wolfpack. Wolfpack moving. Challenging the cat inside him. The sword blazed and the things on its blade writhed. John felt them demanding and needing and dreaming like living things.
They craved blood.
Not good, not good, not good.
Strada screeched like a demon banshee, and John was sure the sound belched out of his ears. He tried to stop it, couldn’t, and Strada’s essence pulled against his like a seam tearing at its threads
“Don’t do this,” John said, and he didn’t like how harsh and hollow his voice sounded.
Maggie. Right in front of him. Her smile got meaner and stranger, and John’s fuddled brain picked out other faces etched on top of hers, like she had turned into her sword. She moved the red-hot blade through the air, making the flames arc higher. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t bring that thing close to me.” John’s vision shifted again. Shades and colors and murmurs and whispers and sounds and hints and smells and textures surged through his awareness. Too vivid. Too strong.
Fuck. What is this—super cat senses now? Christ. If he really had gotten himself bitten by a radioactive spider and started spitting big, sticky webs, it would have been easier than this. The ends of his fingers burned like claws wanted to explode out of his skin. His skin crawled like fur was trying to find a foothold. His teeth itched from the inside, like they were growing. His words jumbled in his mind; more to the point, they wouldn’t come forward, like something was holding them back.
John jerked against the chains above his head and shoved back against Strada’s energy with everything he had.
“That sword’s not safe,” he snarled at the women, way too tiger.
They were nothing but a blur—then, Andy. Andy in front, with her hand on the charm around her neck. “No shit the sword’s dangerous,” she said, and he had to figure she was still talking and not running or drawing down on him because she had no idea he was about to go all hairy and psychotic. “We agreed to examine you, not follow the Geneva Conventions. Now tell us—where are the Rakshasa hiding?”
Prickles of energy ran across his skin, watery yet sizzling, with a pressure-like power that seemed to drive him backward as Strada tried to come forward.
“I don’t know.” John rattled his chains again, using the pressure and pain of the cuffs cutting into his wrists to hold his focus. “These chains aren’t strong enough.”
This time he directed his words at the blond blur of movement that had to be Dio. Please, for the love of God, she had to hear what he was saying and understand. “Get the Mothers before you do it—whatever you’re doing.”
What the hell?
Whose voice was that? Not his, but it was him talking, him saying, “Get the Mothers to hold back this bastard in my head!”
Maggie Cregan spun into his view and laughed out loud. Her rune-covered sword blasted flames in every direction, and the wind chimes around the room started to ring in a weird pattern, like a marching step.
Funeral. Funeral march.
“We’re not planning to hold you back, Strada,” Maggie told him. “If you get out of line, we’ll just kill you. I’ll ask you again—where are your furry friends? What are they up to?”
“Kill me if you have to,” John told Dio in Strada’s voice. “I don’t know where the demons are. When I find them, I’ll call you.”
He had an urge to let loose with a roar, a rattling, paralyzing sound so low it would break bones and snap trees and bounce off mountains. He could feel the dangerous noise building inside him, and it took every fraction of strength he possessed to hold it back.
Questions fired at him from every direction now, different voices, different intensities. More energy touched him and poked him and prodded him and shoved him, air and earth and more water, too much, all of it, suffocating his self-will and giving Strada too much of an opening.
“How did you really get that body?”
“Why are you so focused on Camille?”
“Why haven’t you showed yourself before now?”
He couldn’t tell who was talking. He felt like the elemental power in the room was trying to compel him to answer, that the circling was part of some bad-ass hypnosis, but it wasn’t working, Christ, no, and the energy was even worse, stripping him down, tearing all the human off him. He couldn’t say a word without losing what little control he had left. He couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, not this way, not here or now, or—
If I give in to this roar, I’ll be gone.
They’ll be gone.
He made himself imagine the room before all the weirdness started, with its leather furniture and its table and its smoky mirrors and sets of chimes. He made himself see it covered in gore. A battlefield. A bloodbath. Just without the san
d and the rocks and hardware from the war.
Hold it together. Hold it. Hold it tight.
Dio stopped moving, breaking that blur of leather and Sibyl and pulsing elemental energy. John barely found the wits to stare at her face, to see the concern edge out her usual anger and distance.
“If I grow fur—” All snarl now. Could they even understand him? “If I grow fur, do it. Kill me fast.”
Dio took her hand off the charm around her neck and gave him the once-over. Bela and Andy came up beside her and did the same thing.
“I don’t think he can answer,” Dio said. “Something’s not right.”
“Agreed,” Bela said. Scientific. In charge. She had commander written all over her. If she was in John’s unit, he would have put her up for a promotion, even if it meant losing her.
John couldn’t see Maggie and the other two for now, just the Sibyls he knew, the Sibyls he wished knew him enough to realize he was about to explode like a pipe bomb made out of tiger-demon.
Dio. The hard-ass. She would stop him.
Bela. Married to Duncan. Duncan was part demon now, thanks to the Rakshasa attack. Was she seeing how hard he was fighting?
John’s vision tapped out for a second, giving him darkness, like he was looking at the inside of his own skull.
No!
He burst forward again.
Andy. Andy was there. Two of the Curson demons working as detectives for the Occult Crimes Unit were her best friends. She had to get this.
Strada—the goat-fucker—seemed to be pounding on the inside of his head with a sledgehammer.
“Hurry, goddamnit,” he growled at the three Sibyls closest to him, not able to temper his language even with all the women in the room. “I’ve got him. Whatever else you have to do, do it now. Right now.”
Maggie Cregan flamed into view on his right, coming at him with that sword like she’d been looking forward to cutting somebody for weeks. Sheila and Karin followed her but didn’t try to slow her down.
“Be careful.” Bela held up both hands. “Be as gentle as you can be until you know what he really is.”