by Anna Windsor
“He just needs time,” she said again. “You stay with him, okay?”
No crying. No time for tears now. She could cry later if she really needed to. If she thought any further than that, she’d fall apart into gibberish and screaming, and whatever small chance Elana still had to make it out of the aqueduct would burn away to nothing.
Camille gave John one last, long glance.
He just needs …
On impulse, she leaned forward and touched her lips to his. The gold in her arm tingled, but John didn’t wake like a sleeping prince recognizing the touch of his princess.
“Happily ever after,” she whispered in his ear. “You made me believe. Now wake up and prove it can happen.”
John’s eyes remained closed, and his face stayed slack and vacant. She couldn’t detect any hint of life’s energy inside him, except for his beating heart.
“Where are you going?” Ben asked in a quiet, worried voice.
Camille didn’t know how to explain it, so she just said, “Down. I’m going down to get Elana.”
She bit back the terrible scream she wanted to turn loose, tried to ignore the wretched ache in her heart, and let herself fade into the earth’s channels again.
( 39 )
Down.
It took only a moment, because Camille knew right where to go. To the map room with the little stone table. To the place where Elana had taken some sort of marker and, like a happy child, scrawled the word Heaven beside her favorite place in the world.
Left arm tingling like crazy, she rose out of the channel exactly in that room, and there was Elana sitting at the stone table. Her silvery hair and robes were smeared with grime and blood, but she herself seemed to be intact.
When Camille stepped free of the channel, Elana’s white eyes turned straight to her, and Elana whispered, “Camille.”
Instead of the relief Camille expected, Elana’s whisper was absolutely horrified. “My dear,” she said in the quietest voice Camille had ever heard, “go back where you came from right away. Hurry!”
“I came to get you out of here.”
“That’s not possible.”
“The Occult Crimes Unit and the Sibyls are coming on a raid. If I don’t get you to safety, Tarek will kill you the second the raid starts.”
Elana looked like that was the worst news she had ever heard in her life. She put her finger to her lips and gestured toward the door. After a few seconds, Camille understood that the old woman wanted her to use her energy to explore what was in the big chamber outside the map room and beyond, in the tunnels.
Camille could sense the strange fuzzy-cotton energy of the muting charms deployed by the Rakshasa and Griffen’s Coven, but she had to be inside the field. She had no trouble reaching out and finding—
Oh.
Oh, no.
Camille’s chest got so tight she almost coughed and had to stuff her gold-laced fist in her mouth. The projective gold hummed against her lips, reacting to the massive quantity of demon energy standing only a few feet away from her.
After she had checked the tunnels in every direction, she staggered back to Elana, knelt beside the woman, and whispered into her ear, “How many Eldest are out there?”
“All,” Elana said back. “All that still live, I believe, save for Tarek.”
The surrounding tunnels were jammed with Created, and humans were scattered along the corridors as well, some elementally talented and some elementally quiet—but likely carrying Czech assault rifles.
The OCU and every Sibyl and good demon in New York City were about to get slaughtered.
Camille took Elana’s hands and tried to move her into the channels below the aqueduct, but Elana didn’t sink when Camille started to move down. She could tell immediately that transporting something more complex than clothing and weapons would take far more understanding and knowledge than she possessed.
“Go,” Elana told her. “Warn them.”
Camille nodded.
She turned Elana’s hands loose, hating to leave her even for the minute this would take, and far off in the distance, Camille heard the first spits and barks of gunfire.
“Too late,” Elana said, her voice shaking.
The door to Elana’s room burst open, and a Rakshasa Eldest Camille didn’t recognize came striding in, blade drawn to cut Elana down.
Camille didn’t even have time to draw her sword. She raised her left hand on instinct and pulled on her fire energy, intending to hit him with a burst of flameless heat—but the metal in her hand crackled. Her arm jerked back so violently she felt like she’d fired a rifle, and a ball of blue-white fire hit the Eldest square in the face.
He bellowed and reeled out of the room, banging at the flames, which clung to him in ways no simple fire would ever do.
No time to think about it.
Camille grabbed Elana’s hand and pulled her out of the room.
Dear Goddess. Rakshasa everywhere, looking at them. All of them Eldest. Every last one.
Camille held up her golden arm to see what would happen—and the metal of the dinar didn’t let her down. With the slightest touch of fire energy, the gold sent out burst after burst of that sticky blue fire, driving the wall of Eldest back as they fought with singed fur and scorched eyes.
Camille was grateful for that, but heartsick that the coin’s repelling properties had been lost. Without that, no way were they getting out of this chamber alive.
From far out in the tunnels, she heard screaming.
“They’ll all be killed,” Elana yelled. “Go to them. Go now and get your friends out of this aqueduct.”
Camille couldn’t make herself leave Elana, but she couldn’t let the OCU and all the Sibyls die, either. Panic seized her, gripped her, and she snatched at fire energy, blasting and blasting, hitting all the Eldest like her fireballs were targeting themselves.
Probably were. Her hand was projective. It was mirroring her will.
They were fighting off the flames better by the second. How many of the bastards? Thirty? Thirty-five? More? She had no idea, but she kept pulling Elana toward one of the exits even though her rational mind told her she was heading toward a huge crowd of mobsters and Created.
The demons were less than five feet away from her now, battling through all the fire she threw. It wasn’t even slowing them down, so she stopped using it.
A sword swiped at Camille, cutting her right arm from shoulder to elbow. Pain seared her senses, and she cried out and stopped running, thrusting Elana behind her, keeping her between the chamber wall and her own body.
The Eldest had gotten over their surprise. They had formed ranks. They even had frigging shields Camille assumed they’d robbed from the Bengal armory. There were black tigers and white tigers and tawny-colored demons. So many shades. So many claws and fangs.
She took another sword bite, this time on her left. Drawing her scimitar seemed pretty useless against such numbers, but she did it anyway. They were just toying with her right now, making sure she couldn’t do anything else they didn’t expect.
The Created out in the tunnels started to snarl and pummel against the doors.
It was probably time for the Eldest to go out and help them, but they hadn’t counted on a breach from within. Too fucking bad.
Camille used her projective hand to light the scimitar just because she could. Seeing the blade burst into brilliant blue-white flames made her happy. Good. People should be happy when they die.
She swung the blade, but the first blow from the nearest Eldest tore it right out of her hand and left her fingers broken and limp.
These monsters were five times her size. It was like taking on a roomful of Vodoun gods.
Most of them were starting to laugh at her.
Camille held her broken, throbbing hand against her midsection. Outside the chamber, the screaming got worse. So much worse. She thought she could smell gunpowder and blood even through the mind-numbing ammonia.
She should have do
ne what Elana told her to do and left the old woman behind to warn the OCU. How could she have let this bloodbath happen?
“Put down the blade,” the nearest Rakshasa growled, “and I will kill you before I eat you.”
Camille answered him with a fireball in the mouth, but he used his shield to knock it away from him.
Dozens of pairs of eyes blazed at her. Hungry. Waiting for the kill.
Time was up.
Outside, her friends were dying.
Behind her, Elana was about to be ripped to pieces.
“I have to fix this,” she whispered over the rumbling growls of the Rakshasa.
No more thought than that.
She thrust her gold-laced hand toward the floor, opened herself up, and called for fire. At the same time, she tried to protect herself and keep a shield over Elana.
The Rakshasa nearest her let out a blood-squelching cry and lunged toward her, swinging his broadsword.
He seemed to be moving in slow motion. Camille was looking at him, seeing him coming, but she wasn’t hearing him anymore.
All she was hearing was fire’s endless, insatiable roar.
His sword came down at her, slicing toward her belly, but the chamber floor was shaking, shaking so hard, and still she pulled and pulled, begging the fire to help her, touching all the hot metal rushing beneath the city in the earth’s molten channels.
The Rakshasa’s sword froze midstroke as liquid ore blasted through the floor and coated him in a huge, amorphous blob of heat and fire.
The back chamber doors broke open, and Bengal fighters spilled in. Camille saw them, couldn’t help them. The metal covered them in a simmering blanket of bronze and silver and gold and iron and so many more types, she couldn’t even name them.
The gouts of liquid ore blew from floor to ceiling like a beautiful moving light show, but from somewhere came a steady whisper.
Stop.
That’s what it sounded like.
Stop.
Stop.
Camille struggled to regain her own awareness, her sense of separateness from the fire she was touching. Her left hand vibrated so hard she felt like every bone in her body was about to jar loose.
Stop.
Elana’s voice.
She was hearing it with her ears, not just her mind.
Stop.
Stop.
Camille released the energy, letting it flow back through her, down into the earth and the channels awaiting its return.
The world seemed to go eerily silent except for the drip-drip-drip of the solidifying metal. The stench of burned fur and flesh was enough to make her gag.
The chamber looked like something from a pharaoh’s tomb, completely encased in metal, every inch of it coated except for where Camille was standing and holding Elana behind her. The molten metal hadn’t touched them.
Elana cried softly behind her, and Camille could tell she was shaking. Anyone would, reliving a nightmare like this.
So many big lumps of metal, all through the chamber. Each one Rakshasa Eldest—except there at the end, she remembered, the Bengal fighters.
Something happened inside her, a bleakness, a hopelessness, and she turned to Elana. “Oh, Goddess. How many of your people did I kill?”
“I don’t know,” Elana whispered. “Many. I sense few alive in these—these tombs.”
Camille’s mind came back to reality a little more, but she didn’t want it to. Too much clarity. Too much logic. A was adding to B, and C was becoming clear. Camille raked her fingers down the sides of her face. “Did I make a tidal wave?”
Elana’s white eyes glistened up at her, full of tears.
“I don’t know,” Elana whispered again.
Appalled with herself, with everything she had likely just visited on the world, Camille had no idea what to do. Getting Elana out was the only thing that made the slightest bit of sense. She was getting ready to pick Elana up and carry her free of this death chamber when a bellow of absolute rage met her ears.
Camille barely had time to turn toward the main room again before Tarek hurtled into the chamber in tiger form. His golden fur rippled in the odd lighting as he slid across the smooth metal.
Three Created flanked him, and Eldest and Created alike pelted straight toward Camille.
She felt nothing at all. No fear. No rage. Not even a flicker in her heart rate.
On reflex, she stretched out her gold-laced hand, heated metal on the floor in front of her, and blasted Tarek with the liquid before he could reach them. His fur caught fire and he burned, and she coated him with more and more metal as the Created gave ground but kept coming at her from different angles.
Shouts rang out behind the demons, and two broke off pursuit and turned to face whatever was challenging them. Camille saw blades swinging, felt the wind, felt the earth energy.
Sibyls.
Her mind and heart were starting to wake up from what just happened, yet she couldn’t accept it. She couldn’t grasp that the lumps of metal all around her used to be living creatures. Demons, yes, evil, yes—but not all. Some were Bengals.
And what had happened elsewhere in the world because of what she had done?
How many people were dying right this very moment, just because she’d wanted to save her own life?
Survival instinct, her mind told her. Every creature has it.
Wrong, her heart said.
She heard the echo of Elana’s desperate cry: Stop, stop, stop.
The Created, a huge, yellow-furred creature, loomed before her, and Camille didn’t even try to defend herself. She couldn’t imagine killing even this monster. She couldn’t kill anything right now. Maybe her body would shield Elana.
The Created jerked and its paws flew upward as the tip of a broadsword emerged from its chest.
“Hey,” John shouted to the nearest group of Sibyls.
Two jogged over. Camille dully recognized Maggie Cregan. She watched, stomach roiling, as Maggie beheaded the Created and scorched its ashes. Karin Maros used her wind energy to sweep the ashes of the thing’s body out one door, and she sent the ashes of its head out another door.
Camille heard all this, saw it all, registered it like she was watching a movie instead of living it.
John was here.
And somebody had been nice enough to give him clothes and body armor and a sword.
She should be feeling a rush of joy so great it lifted her straight through the ceiling. He was alive and he was here, and she was—
Missing in action.
Maggie’s sword tried to swipe at John, then Camille, before she got it under control.
“Thanks,” John said.
“Not a problem,” Karin told him, and the two Sibyls took off back toward the tunnels.
John faced Camille. “Sorry I was a little late to the fight. Your quad hit me with one hell of a surge of elemental energy and woke up my brain—kind of like shock paddles to the head. What happened to Elana?”
Camille kept staring at John, but she did manage to tug Elana out from behind her.
He stared at her like he was amazed. “Ben’s in the tunnels,” he said to Elana. “A lot of your fighters have disappeared.”
“You will need to check each of these mounds.” Elana pointed at the metal lumps all over the room, lumps she couldn’t even see, keeping her face turned away from Camille. “Many will be dead, but some will have living creatures within—either Rakshasa Eldest or my Bengal fighters. Perhaps some can be saved.”
John whipped out his cell and relayed this information to Duncan and the OCU. He plugged one ear for a second and nodded like Duncan could see him. “Yeah, right here, alive and in one piece, both of them. Tell the department thanks for the help with Seneca’s men. Did you find that old shithead?”
Camille watched as John frowned.
He listened a little longer, then said, “It was the damnedest thing. The demon-handlers and all those sorcerers just up and quit. Ran away. Good thing, because witho
ut the Asmodai and all that elemental disruption, we could take the Created in teams. There was nobody to direct them, and I don’t think that bunch could think for themselves.”
Just then Ben appeared in the chamber doorway, sword still drawn and dripping with gore.
More dead, Camille’s thoughts whispered. More wounded. More damaged.
Camille couldn’t control where her mind was going with her thoughts. When Elana moved away from her, heading for Ben, she wanted to cry, and she didn’t even know why.
From somewhere far off, she heard Bela shouting, Dio swearing at something, and water splashing against a wall.
“Come here, beautiful,” John said, wrapping her up in his arms, and for the briefest second Camille could feel him, his muscle, his heat, his heartbeat. She could smell the fresh, faintly spicy scent she knew was his. She let herself press her face into him, hug him back.
“I love you,” she told him, and she meant it. She loved him. She loved Bela and Dio and Andy. She cared deeply for Elana, and she thought she loved Ona, too. Poor Ona. So much made sense to Camille now, in ways it never had before.
“I love you,” John murmured in her ear, and she felt that like a tickle in her mind, like a tingle in her chest and gold-laced hand. “Tell me you’re okay, Camille. I need to know.”
But Camille couldn’t give him what he asked for.
Her quad was getting closer. Everyone she knew. Coming here. They wanted to see her. They wanted to see what she’d done.
She couldn’t face that.
She pressed her face deeper into John’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” she told John.
He held on tighter. “Wait a minute. What are you—? No, you’re not—”
“I’m sorry,” she told him again.
Then Camille let herself sink away into the earth and just disappear.
( 40 )
The man and woman in OCU SWAT gear carried their bags through the silent aqueduct chamber, which was deserted now except for the sentry at the main door. The dark visors of their helmeted face masks reflected the metal tombs of the once great and terrifying race of Rakshasa demons. The few Bengals who’d survived had been extracted and were being treated at unknown locations.