by Anna Windsor
Andy didn’t say anything, but she looked like she was thinking about knocking the sword out of Maggie’s hands.
It was Dio who blocked Maggie’s path and faced off with her, and the blast of wind energy that put out the sword’s flames cooled John’s skin just enough for him to catch his breath and drop-kick Strada’s essence a few more paces backward in his consciousness.
“Don’t dick around,” Dio told Maggie. “And don’t do anything you don’t have to do.”
Maggie gave Dio a major frown. “Hey, you called me, remember? If you want the Mothers, I can open the channels for you if Camille’s still out of it.”
Bela, Andy, and Dio shook their heads at the same time.
Dio jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward John. “You can find out what we need to know. All I’m saying is, don’t take chances, and don’t be an ass. He’s as much as saying Strada’s in there with him, and it’s obvious the demon’s giving him a fight.”
“Then why are we just questioning him and sampling his essence?” Sheila asked Bela. “If he’s got Rakshasa in him, we should put him down.”
Bela’s sharp look might have killed a lesser Sibyl, and Sheila seemed to realize what she’d said. Then she appeared to remember whom she was talking to, or maybe whom and what Bela had married. “Oh. I—well. Never mind.”
“Smooth,” Andy said to Sheila. “Want to add a knee and butt cheek to that foot you just crammed in your mouth?”
The kitchen door swung open before Sheila could answer.
As John’s divided mind grappled for a hold on what was happening, someone pushed through the wall of leather bodysuits in front of him. He felt a new shock of energy, fresher, different, more familiar—and the flames on the communications platform died away to reveal Camille, ethereal with her long auburn hair brushing across her freckled cheeks and shoulders.
Strada pushed to get at her.
John shoved right back at the demon, so hard the energy drained out of his knees and legs, leaving him dangling by the cuffs and chains.
Strada roared, but John held on inside himself, staring at Camille.
No. Fucking. Way.
New energy rose inside him, hotter and angrier, like he’d borrowed it directly from the fire Sibyl he intended to keep safe, no matter what. Screw Strada. The Rakshasa wasn’t getting near Camille, not now, not ever, not if John had to die right here on this meat hook to keep it from happening.
“Be careful, honey,” Bela said to Camille. “I’m not sure whom we’re dealing with.”
“I am,” Camille said, but John barely heard the words because he was throwing breath and heartbeat and blood flow and absolutely everything else he had into containing the demon sharing his essence.
I’ll kill you, he told Strada. I’ll find some way.
The demon answered him with a shriek of absolute fury.
( 13 )
Long minutes seemed to tick by, but John knew it was only seconds. He had Strada now. He’d taken back the advantage, blocked the demon’s advance, and left the bastard snarling in the blackest, farthest corner of his mind.
Camille gazed up at him, taking in the chains and cuffs and smoke and mirrors and God only knew what else.
John hoped he hadn’t grown big tiger ears and a tail while he’d been distracted.
For a few seconds the room blurred out of John’s awareness again, and he saw nothing but the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about. Her unusual green-blue eyes drew his focus like rare jewels or secret sunlit pools hidden on some tropical island. She had on a little green silk number with matching bottoms so short they barely peeked out beneath the tank. The dinar around her neck hung below the shirt, making a circular outline just above the swell of her breasts. His cat senses, still on high, took in the sweet scent of lilies mingled with perspiration and some kind of lotion and seemingly everything female in the universe.
She was enough to make him do anything, give up anything—
Or she would have been if he hadn’t been hanging from a meat hook trying like hell to be sure a Rakshasa didn’t crawl out of his skin. Literally. But Strada didn’t seem to be close at all now. Down for the count. Had the dinar around Camille’s neck repelled Strada’s remnant essence?
John wondered, but didn’t think that was it.
It’s her. It’s being close to her. That makes everything else a nonissue, doesn’t it?
Camille looked angry and tired, fragile and perfect all at the same time. John wanted to pick her up and hold her and keep her safe forever. Her expression mixed weariness and lingering pain from her injuries with a fury so deep and explosive John was surprised she wasn’t letting off steam and trailing sparks like Maggie, but that didn’t seem to be Camille’s style.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Bela said to Camille, just about the same time Andy came out with “You need to be resting.”
Dio didn’t make any comments, but when Camille turned on Maggie Cregan, the wiry blond air Sibyl got the hell out of the way. Energy flowed and crackled around the alcove, making the mirrors rattle against the wall. John could have sworn he heard—that he felt—distant roaring, not human or animal or demon, but fire itself, the kind of deadly, endless flowing fire that lived in the center of the earth.
“Shit,” somebody whispered. It sounded like Andy.
The two fire Sibyls went face-to-face with less than an arm’s length separating them, and Camille didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by the taller woman or her bizarre killing blade. Camille glanced at the sword, then glared at Maggie like she wanted to say a lot of things, maybe a lot of loud things. John waited for her to speak in the voice of that center-earth fire that seemed to be rattling the floor as it tried to burst through the planet’s crust.
Instead, Camille seemed to channel every ounce of that power until her voice came out in cold, measured, and lethal tones. “If you cut him with that sword, I’ll kill you.”
Maggie’s face tensed from surprise, and she gave ground. Just a step, but John read it as her version of total surrender. The thunder under the earth faded, as if a rising volcano under New York City had changed its mind about erupting.
For a moment, six pairs of eyes in the room lost focus, but the seventh pair, Camille’s beautiful aquamarine ones, moved away from Maggie and fixed directly on John’s face without the slightest hint of distraction. The amount of steel in that stare, the depth of fire he saw and sensed—John thought about all the men he had ever commanded, and he realized he’d take this woman by his side just as fast, any day, any battle, no matter what kind of hurt was coming down around them.
Warrior.
The whole fragile thing, that was just her shell, gorgeous as it was. There was absolutely nothing breakable underneath.
He realized that in some strange, primal way, she had just staked a claim on him, a claim all her sister Sibyls seemed to recognize and be inclined to respect, at least for now. John was impressed by that, and fine with it, and stupid-teenage-boy grateful she thought he was worth the risk.
“It’s okay,” he told her, feeling the strength of his own control over Strada growing more solid than iron and rock.
Everything’s fine now that you’re here.
That much he kept to himself, but he had a sense that she knew, that she had heard the words he didn’t say, somewhere down deep in her heart. As long as John was looking at Camille, Strada didn’t have a prayer in hell of taking him over.
“Let them do this,” John said, relieved to hear his own voice speaking the words his brain threw forward. “Let me show them what I really am.”
I won’t let you down. Not now. Not ever.
Camille came back to stand in front of him, the air of dangerousness around her beginning to dissipate—though not completely. “There are risks with her sword. Once it tastes you, it’ll know you forever. It can track you and hunt you, and it’ll seek you in battle. Any chance it gets, it’ll cut you again. She controls it, but not completely.”
&
nbsp; John had a lot of questions about that blade, but now wasn’t the time to ask them. “I’m not planning to fight in any battles against her sword, or against the Sibyls.”
“The Mothers’ judgments can come fast and harsh,” Dio said, moving in next to Camille. “And without a lot of discussion—but their tests would definitely be safer.”
Bela came closer, too, and Andy, while Maggie and her two friends kept some distance. Camille’s fighting group now seemed to be willing to let him choose between Maggie and her creepy little metal friend and summoning the Mothers, like he’d asked them to do in the first place. The Mothers none of these Sibyls seemed to really like or want in their safe space, except when they had no other choice.
John couldn’t really shrug because of the chains and cuffs and meat hook, but he gave his answer in relaxed, causal tones, mostly to put Camille at ease. “Safer isn’t always better or faster. Let’s get on with it.”
Everybody in the room seemed to wait for Camille’s consent, and she gave it by turning away from John and moving out of her quad’s way.
Dio, Andy, and Bela eased back into position around the big wooden table while Camille faced Maggie again, this time with more space between them. Maggie’s fighting group stayed close to her, and John thought they looked ready to jump between the two fire Sibyls, just in case.
Probably not a bad idea.
This time, though, Camille didn’t seem cocked and ready to go off. She gestured to the sword Maggie still gripped like it might get away from her. “Be careful.”
Maggie’s nod was quick and confident.
Camille turned away from the group and went to sit on the leather sofa at the edge of the alcove, and Maggie’s group spread out to complete the circle around the table. Elemental energy flowed around the circle, and once more flames erupted from the little lead-lined trough at the very edge of the platform. This time the blaze seemed powerful but subdued.
Nobody tried to hypnotize him or ask him any questions. Maggie didn’t do all her threatening and dancing around, either. She just relit her sword and waited until the freakshow on the blade started moving. Then she came forward, reached over the flames at the edge of the table, and slid the sharp edge against his side, just below his waist.
He felt the metal bite into him.
Teeth.
But when he’d seen the blade, the edges were smooth. It was just a sword. He didn’t need to get dramatic.
The damned thing’s biting me like a vampire.
He felt it draw some of his blood, slowly, carefully, like it was tasting him. When he looked down, he didn’t see the pointed teeth he expected, but the scene was gruesome enough. The runic pictures on the blade moved and pulsed and strained toward the blood flowing out of his side.
John watched, disgusted, as Maggie pulled the sword back, blasted his small wound with a jet of heat to seal it, and peered into the fire on her sword.
A red ribbon of fluid spread across the burning metal, sinking into each etching and hollow, alight but somehow untouched by the heat. The figures seemed to squirm with ecstasy at the taste of his blood. He’d have liked to pull a Lord of the Rings and haul that weapon to some mountain of ultimate doom and pitch it in just to be sure the bastard melted down to atoms and molecules.
The chimes above John’s head whispered and tinkled from the traces of energy flickering through the room, some from the seven Sibyls, some from dark, smoking mirrors on the wall, a bit escaping containment from the lip of the platform—and the rest from the sword, though it seemed to be settling down now that it had—
What, been fed?
Maggie studied the designs on the blade like some old Irish witch reading entrails, and after a few more seconds, she said, “Spirit of a man, ghost of a demon. Well, not really a ghost. More like a shadow or a shade, a remnant essence with some energy.”
The flames on the blade went out. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a cloth, and wiped the metal down, and a moment later the executioner’s sword was sheathed.
“So he is what he claims to be.” Bela wasn’t really asking a question. Her dark eyes seemed relieved, and John would have bet his life that she was thinking of Duncan, and how Duncan would feel when he learned John was alive and in some ways okay. That would be a bitch of a conversation, no doubt, but John couldn’t think about that now.
“Can the remnant essence of Strada control him?” Dio asked, sparing John a quick glance.
“Yes, if he allows it.” Maggie rested her palm on the sword’s hilt, and she looked nervous now, or maybe self-conscious. “Or if he’s impaired somehow.”
Andy’s green eyes narrowed. “How impaired? Like, drunk or stoned?”
“More like enraged or cold-cocked—or, like we figured out with other types of demons, exposed to too much projective energy.”
All the women in Camille’s group raised the hands to their crescent moon charms they were wearing, and Camille touched her dinar. John made the connection, understanding that somehow the dinar and the necklaces allowed these Sibyls to make use of this kind of energy, which he vaguely remembered from his time in Duncan’s head. The mirrors on the wall—they used the same kind of energy.
“Projective energy can strip paranormals down to their nonhuman essence,” Camille said, and John knew the explanation was for his benefit.
Maggie still had a grip on the hilt, and all the bravado was gone from her face. Worry lines softened her features, and when she spoke, she sounded scared and pissed—and somehow a little awed as she once more faced Camille, who stood even though she seemed too tired to get to her feet.
“You’re in there, too,” Maggie said. “In him, in his blood. I can’t explain it. It’s like you touched his essence—their essence—somehow.”
John took in the words, but he couldn’t quite sort through them beyond the fact that Maggie was verifying the connection he felt to Camille. Camille seemed to process this part, too, and her shoulders sagged.
Was that relief? His gut went double tight on the spot. Regret?
Keep it together, Cole.
“How did you join with two other souls?” Maggie asked Camille, a hint of judgment creeping into the question. “How is that even possible? What the hell did you do?”
The deep, deep fire in Camille’s eyes flashed just enough to make Maggie lift her chin and tug at her sword like she was thinking about defending herself.
“I did what I had to do.” Camille’s tone invited argument, and Maggie seemed like she wanted to take the bait, but she didn’t.
Camille still had a too-even, too-steady expression that made John worry she would suddenly draw a tiny derringer and blast Maggie right in the mouth, scary sword and all. Maybe Maggie was worried about the same thing, because she stopped pushing her luck and kept her mouth firmly closed.
John wasn’t sure what kind of feud these women had, but he sensed it ran hot and nasty—yet they were willing to put it aside for the sake of their purpose. That was evident in the way they turned away from each other and let the conflict flow out of them like a dark, troubled breath.
Then, as if to punctuate the whole situation, a tiny woman came out of the kitchen and into the room—or, more to the point, she just appeared by the kitchen doorway like she’d been standing there all along.
John’s first thought was Sibyl Mother, which was strange, given her scars and bald head and the way she was dressed—tunic and breeches instead of color-coded robes.
His second thought was Oh, shit, because Strada snapped awake in his mind, coming to full roaring alert. With Camille so close, John had no trouble containing the demon, but what he sensed from the essence lodged in his brain—whoa.
Another feud, this one a blood feud, right to the death.
Elana’s warning to him, about the fire Sibyl Mothers coming for Camille, about Strada reacting negatively to them—it rang through his mind, but this woman wasn’t sneaking around or spying on anybody. She was just standing there looking at him,
and sometimes at Andy, with obvious discomfort on her scarred face. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see this little creature as a huge threat.
The demon in his head obviously disagreed.
The Sibyls in the room, save for Camille, seemed nervous with her, too. They drew away from the little figure, treating her like she might be slightly radioactive.
“Ona,” Camille said, holding out her hand. To the others, she said, “This is Ona,” like that explained everything. “She’s come to visit from Motherhouse Ireland to work with me for a while.”
Ona came forward and took Camille’s fingers in her own, and now even Maggie looked afraid.
Okay.
If the executioners’ spawn was scared of this one, maybe he should worry after all. But John found he didn’t feel anything like that. His instincts acknowledged this Ona in much the same way as he had naturally been comfortable with Elana. Generals were generals, and John had dealt with enough of them that he respected their roles and whatever they’d gone through to reach that rank and position of command.
Plus Strada’s essence hated Ona and seemed absolutely petrified of her, and John liked that a lot.
The East Ranger group said a few quick goodbyes, and Bela thanked them for coming over to help.
“No problem,” Sheila told her as the three women headed for the door, almost like they were fleeing Ona and Camille. Sheila’s tone was light, but with a please-don’t-call-again-soon undertone John didn’t think anybody could miss.
Fine by him. He’d just as soon not deal with the East Ranger group in the near future either, unless they were fighting together to behead Rakshasa.
“We need to tell the Mothers about him and spread the word before somebody kills him by accident,” Camille said as the front door slammed shut behind the East Ranger air Sibyl. “Get him off the platform.”
“Where are we going to keep him?” Dio asked, coming closer to John and Camille and Ona, but keeping her eyes on the strange little woman.
“We aren’t keeping him unless the Mothers give that order,” Bela said. She was staring at Ona, too. “He is who he says he is. We don’t have any right to hold him.”