by Anna Windsor
“Why flame form?” Andy asked.
“They were trying to save themselves,” Jake said. “They had realized if they continued fighting these women, they would all die. It’s why so many of them survived what happened.”
“What did the Sibyls do?” Bela asked, staring at Camille instead of Jake.
“They caught the demons in a projective trap.” Camille looked down at her hands. John could tell she really didn’t want to talk about this next part, that it was hurting her. He touched her shoulder, just gave it a squeeze, and she reached to cover his hand with hers.
“The fire Sibyl in the group pulled molten metal out of the earth and covered them,” she said. “Encased them all. Half got pierced in the heart, beheaded, and incinerated all at the same time, so they died. It was a desperation move on the Sibyls’ part—that or lose the battle and lose the world.”
“How did she—” Bela began.
“Later for that part.” Camille cleared her throat like she was about to say a lot more, but John saw she couldn’t do it. He looked at Jake.
“There were consequences,” Jake said.
“I hate it when people get vague.” Andy rubbed droplets off her hand. “Spit it out. What consequences?”
Jake and Camille studied each other for a moment.
“Everyone was encased, including the fire Sibyl and her quad,” Jake said. “Two died instantly. The other two were left maimed. And only half the Rakshasa died, so after they worked their way out of the molten metal, the two Sibyl survivors had to trap the remaining demons. That’s how one of them got bitten and changed.”
That made no sense to John at all, and he broke in with his own question. “Why didn’t the Sibyls just kill the remaining Rakshasa?”
Camille looked away, but she was the one who answered him. “Perhaps at that moment they had lost their will to kill.”
“There were more consequences, weren’t there?” Andy asked, her pitch going up as she went unnaturally still.
Camille’s gaze was fixed on Andy, and now her hands were shaking. “The molten ore came from where the earth could spare it, a volcanic chamber. The sudden loss of volume caused an earthquake, just like an eruption. That caused an elementally fueled tidal wave.”
“The wave that destroyed Motherhouse Antilla and killed all the water Sibyls,” Andy said. “Fucking wonderful.”
Camille still looked like she was dreading something. John couldn’t figure out what would be worse, but Andy slowly got off her exercise ball. She had a look on her face he’d never seen before. Bela and Dio reacted instantly, throwing up elemental barriers to contain her energy. Jake Lowell helped, and even Camille, as tired as she was, lifted her hands to help with keeping Andy’s water contained.
Even with all that effort, sprinklers exploded and rained all over the gym. People working out on the other side of the basement started swearing, then seemed to realize there was serious Sibyl business going down. John had never seen people get the hell out of a room so fast in his life.
“Who was the fire Sibyl, Camille?” Andy’s voice had gone deadly now. “Was she one of the survivors?”
Camille nodded, and then John knew.
Ona.
Andy worked it out almost as fast as he did, and her face turned redder than hot flames. “And you let her in our house?”
“I didn’t know.” Camille rocked on her exercise ball. “She didn’t do it—”
“What are you going to say? It was an accident? She didn’t do it on purpose?” Andy’s wild red hair soaked in water from somewhere, dripping down her leathers. “Camille, she wiped out hundreds of people. She killed two of her own quad. It’s because of her I’m stuck in this all alone, with no idea what I’m doing—”
Dio cut her off by jumping up in front of her, squaring off with Camille. “What kind of Sibyl is Elana?”
Camille looked even more nervous at this question. She chewed her bottom lip for a second, her gaze still locked on Andy.
“You’re shitting me.” Andy’s knees seemed to go wobbly on her, and Dio had to get hold of her to keep her on her feet. “No, you’re not serious.” Andy covered her mouth. “Tell me you’re serious, that she really is a water Sibyl?”
Camille opened her hands like somebody beseeching heaven. “You’re not alone anymore. She agreed that once we’ve defeated the Rakshasa, she’ll do what she can to help you, though she wants you to know she was just a year out of Motherhouse Antilla when this happened.”
Andy started crying, sudden fast bursts of sobs, and Dio got an arm around her, giving her some support. John had to look away because Andy wasn’t the crying sort of woman. This was gut-level desperation and panic and relief all balled into one big bunch of tears.
After a time, her whole quad got up and held her, and John and Jake sat back exchanging fish-out-of-water glances. John understood the depth of Andy’s breakdown. He only had to deal with demon essence in his head, and he’d had lots of good help with that from the Bengals and all the OCU half demons and demons. Even Camille had been able to help him a little bit.
Andy—her ass had been hanging in the wind since the day she first started shoving water around. She had all these amazing specialized skills she was supposed to know and learn, and only vague descriptions in books that left her guessing. Even better, she was supposed to teach what she didn’t really know to all the water Sibyls showing up at Motherhouse Kérkira.
“Okay, okay.” She started pushing people back. “Get away from me or I’ll never stop blubbering.”
Jake Lowell glanced at the inch or so of water now coursing around the basement floor, then looked at John with something like relief that Andy might get the sprinklers under control in a few.
She wiped her face, then slowly shut off the flow to each spigot.
“They’ll have to be repaired,” she told Jake.
“I’ll add it to the list.”
John saw the look in Andy’s eyes, and in Jake’s. This was an old conversation between them, and a comfortable one.
“I haven’t knocked out any walls,” she said.
“You haven’t,” Jake agreed.
“I don’t like the look on your face, Jake. There’s still stuff you aren’t telling us.”
“I was waiting.”
“For what?”
Jake shrugged. “A chance we could get through this without needing paddles and canoes.”
Andy squeezed water out of her hair and made sure to drip some on Jake. “Fuck you, you scrawny winged Dracula.”
Jake grinned at her, lots less demon, very human.
“Spill it,” Andy said.
Jake slowly stopped smiling, and before he spoke, he looked positively grim. “I don’t believe this information was completely lost to the Mothers. Nor is it lost on them that the universe tends to provide for its own needs. Much as when you manifested your talent, Andy, other, younger water Sibyls began to appear.”
Dio had balanced herself so perfectly on the exercise ball that the rubber could have been bolted to the floor, but after Jake spoke, the whole ball started to shake. “What are you saying?”
Jake held up his hand and counted off. One. “Each Motherhouse had the birth of a Sibyl gifted with projective talents after centuries of only the most minor abilities in this respect.” Two. “All of you were of similar age.” Three. “Andy miraculously appeared with her abilities.” Four. “She, too, was of similar age—”
“They knew we’d be needed,” Dio said, coming off the exercise ball she’d been sitting on and walking to the stone wall beside her, her back to John and Jake and her quad. “That’s why the Mothers let me fight.”
The undertone in her statement made John angry and sad all over again.
That’s why they let me fight … not because they thought I was worth anything.
“And why they let me be claimed,” Camille said, with almost the same undertone.
“And they still didn’t train you,” John said, wishing he
could call up the Sibyl Mothers and have some long … discussions.
“They didn’t know how to train me,” Camille said. “They still don’t know how.”
“They’re probably scared shitless we’ll wipe them out.” Bela came off her ball and kicked it back toward the exercise equipment. “I’m scared shitless we will.”
“We’re weapons to use against unbeatable numbers and insurmountable power,” Camille said. “We’re—”
She left off again, gazing at her sister Sibyls, who didn’t seem to be able to go where she needed them to go.
Jake said it for them, in his analytical Astaroth tones. “You are sacrifices for the greater good.”
“Kinda like the self-destruct cycles on spaceships in all the sci-fi movies,” Andy mused, looking up at the ceiling. “The doomsday device. They deploy us, knowing we’ll scorch the earth and wreck the world, but some people will survive.”
“That’s my take on it,” Camille said. “I was able to learn some basic barriers and self-protections from Elana, which I’ll start teaching you tomorrow, but even with those, if we use projective energy at the level we’ll need to use it, there’s not a huge chance that we’ll all walk away.”
Dio faced them again, her anger evident in her expression and tone. “So when this all goes to hell in a hand-basket, we’re supposed to sacrifice ourselves to rescue these women who—who just put us aside?”
Bela paced, hitting puddles of water as she walked. “Not just them.”
Andy’s laugh was real and bittersweet at the same time. “Don’t you all get it? We’re supposed to save the world. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we were made.”
John watched the four women, hoping one of them would kick up more of an objection to this idea. Most of his hopes were pinned on Dio, who seemed to have the most anger, or Bela, who had Duncan to think about.
But really, he knew better.
They were Sibyls, no matter how their own had treated them, no matter what anybody else thought about them. When they’d taken their oaths to protect the weak and to fulfill their roles as mortar, pestle, broom, and flow of their fighting quad, they’d meant every word.
Bela raised her eyes to Jake.
“The time may come,” she said, glancing at John, “where we’ll have to count on you and your friends to make sure we can do what we have to do.”
Fast, fast rage gripped John. He glared at Jake. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll have my sword and pistol out protecting them. I won’t get in the way.”
Not a single one of them looked like they believed him, especially not Jake, but at least Jake was nice enough to say, “Duncan may not be so cooperative.”
“He will if you explain it to him.” John knew he had to be as red as a damned beet, but he couldn’t help it.
“He might try to do something stupid and heroic,” Jake said.
“Yeah, well …” It was John’s turn to look away, because his brain was whizzing through ten thousand ways to save their lives.
“This is all serious, and we have to deal with it,” Bela said, “but we also have patrol.”
“We probably don’t have to worry about dying tonight.” Andy gave one of the exercise balls a good kick and sent it spinning. “We haven’t found shit-all on these assholes for weeks.”
Bela fidgeted where she was standing, then finally spat out what must have been on her mind all evening. “We’ve got a better chance tonight. I cracked the elemental code on that tooth.” She touched her pendant. “I modified my charm to help me detect muted energy, even at fairly low levels.”
John felt a pleasant shock, then something he hadn’t expected: anticipation.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Andy said. “Anything to get my mind off all the rest of this crap.”
Bela looked at Jake again, and Jake started to change.
John hadn’t ever seen the man in his demon form before. He had to see the transition.
Jake pulled off his shirt and dropped it on the mat where he was standing. His eyes shifted from blue to golden, and his lips pulled back to show large, pointed fangs, top and bottom, and a mouthful of sharp teeth. Claws curled out from his fingers. His skin went pearl white, and a few seconds later, a double pair of white, leathery wings unfurled from his back. He gave John a nod and a snarl, flapped those massive wings once, sending the exercise balls scooting and floating, and then popped out. Just vanished. Poof. Gone.
John didn’t like that. He stared at the ceiling, the walls. Wherever the bastard had gone, he was probably getting help in case he had to snatch John and Duncan out of play in a battle when the women tried to do their thing.
Wonder if Rakshasa and Astaroth are an even match in one-on-one combat.
Because if Jake tried something like that, they just might get that question answered.
( 33 )
Camille walked down the dirty pavement with John and her quad, listening to the creak of her battle leathers in the cold night air. She was letting Bela take point with Andy because of Bela’s modified charm, but also because she didn’t think she had ever been so tired in her life. Dio had already fallen back to take sweep-up, but Camille usually had a sense of where she was. No such thing right now. She didn’t even know what day it was—well, night, now.
The last few days had blurred together completely. The time she spent working with Elana had pushed her to her limits, taken her straight to the edge. She hadn’t seen daylight the entire time she was underground, and even though she didn’t have nearly the problem with enclosed spaces that most fire Sibyls did, it still had been a little much.
Everything in the New York City night seemed too loud, too bright, too everything—especially the stench at the docks when they finally stopped walking. They were right back where they had started weeks ago, staring into the darkness with treated lenses, swapping binoculars back and forth, but Bela had eyes free, her charm gripped in her hand as she studied the dock entrance.
“Can you do this, beautiful?” John’s concern was evident in his tone, in the way his hand rested gently against her back.
She wanted to fold into him and let him carry her home. “I can make it. I have to. As soon as we find what we’re looking for, I’ll crash until we absolutely have to get up again.”
“So we’re agreed,” Andy said, hanging the binoculars around her neck. “We find them tonight. We have the OCU stake them out, keep them under watch. We sleep, we eat, we learn barriers, and we go after them.”
“Simple but elegant,” Bela said. “I’m sure they’ve been watching us for days and weeks. Maybe we can return the favor. And I’m not seeing anything on this dock.”
They moved on to the next dock, and the next. Camille held John’s hand even though that was not proper patrol procedure, because she just didn’t care. She had missed him so much, and the thought that there might be a rift between them made everything feel too hard.
When they came up empty at the fourth dock, she let herself look at him, and the handsome outline of his tanned face, and the way his dark hair spilled into his green eyes as he scouted for whatever he could see in the dark.
She really was in love with him. No question about that. It just didn’t seem reasonable or rational to discuss that right now, and maybe not ever.
It figured that just when she’d finally worked out that she was probably supposed to die to save the world, at last she had something she really, really wanted to live for.
He must have felt her gazing at him, because he looked at her. His face shifted from focused and stern to soft and totally hers in a split second, and she knew he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to make love to her. The way he let her see that with no shame or hesitation took another little piece of Camille’s heart.
“You better stop staring at me like that in public, beautiful.” His voice was so quiet, pitched for only her to hear, and she loved the shivers it gave her.
“I’m tired,” she said, squeezing his fingers, “but not
that tired. Save some energy for me when we get home.”
“Always.”
“I think I’ve got something.” Bela sounded uncertain, but the words brought Camille to full alert. She turned toward the mortar of her triad, who was slowly approaching the edge of the sixth dock.
“What does it look like?” Andy asked. “I’m not seeing any demon trace with the goggles.”
Bela kept walking, stopping, then walking again. “It’s not anything I can see. Their elemental charm disperses most traces. This is more a sense that something was here.”
Camille joined Bela. She lifted her fingers to her dinar, then extended her other hand toward Bela’s hand and the charm she was gripping in her palm. “Can I try to boost your awareness with some fire energy?”
Bela gave her a wary look, but Camille knew she was thinking about last year, when the four of them had managed to combine their sentient talents enough to track demons all over Manhattan. They’d had no idea how dangerous it was … but it worked.
“This is small potatoes,” Camille told her. “I can control it.”
Bela nodded, and Camille put her hand over Bela’s. Carefully, keeping in place the rudimentary self-protections she had learned from Elana and doing what she could to extend those to Bela, Camille drew a measured amount of fire energy into her, through the dinar, and sent it back out again along her arm and down her hand, into Bela’s skin and into the charm Bela was holding.
When her energy touched Bela’s charm, Camille felt the impact in her teeth.
Bela sucked in a breath, blinked, and said, “Unbelievable.”
Camille looked in the direction Bela was looking, and she could see it, too. Red demon trace. Yellow demon trace. Green demon trace. Stomped and restomped paths of elemental energy, hundreds and hundreds of them. Too many to count, too many to even begin to follow—but the strongest traces led off the docks and back into the city, in the general direction of Central Park. The air took on a whispering, sulfur-ammonia stench. Created. Eldest. Asmodai. Other things Camille couldn’t even identify. The size and scope of it made the city seem distant and strange behind them, like there couldn’t possibly be so many lives this close to such a massive amount of perverted energy and danger.