by Anna Windsor
“That’s a question you should ask yourself, John.” She looked away from him again. “For me, this will be a trip to heaven. It’s you who’ll be going to hell.”
( 42 )
Camille stood in her favorite silk nightgown in the orchard, letting the cherry blossoms swirl around her like pink butterflies as the sun came up soft and warm and exactly right for the day. The flower kisses on her skin, especially the hand now branded with gold forever, helped her relax and feel real again, and she needed the sun like she needed her fire.
This place really was amazing. She couldn’t imagine how Ona and her quad had built these fantastic, ethereal gardens in a desert, but she supposed exiles had plenty of time to come up with miracles, like self-sustaining irrigation systems, elemental temperature controls, and rudimentary muting charms, so human eyes never saw the paradise they created.
When most people walked into the Valley of the Gods, they saw only ruins, desert sand, and the remnant metal sarcophagi from the first defeat of the Rakshasa. They never got to walk across the lush grass or wander in the virtual rain forest that had grown in the centuries since Ona and Elana were forced to leave their quad’s handiwork behind.
The Sibyls never put us out, Ona had explained in one of her moments of lucidity. Save for Motherhouse Antilla and Motherhouse Russia, the Dark Crescent Sisterhood wasn’t that organized yet. After Doya accidentally brought that mountain down outside that Russian village and Elana made it flood on the mainland in Greece while we were visiting, the Mothers just … suggested we take some time apart from all the others.
So they had come here, far from any civilization, and built the beginnings of what could have become a Motherhouse in its own right, a different kind of Motherhouse for girls with elemental sentience.
Camille raised her arms and watched the petals dance along her skin.
Ona, Elana, and the rest of their quad might have formed a safe haven for women like Camille—but the Rakshasa knew enough to fear them above all other Sibyls. The demons brought their murderous attack to the Valley of the Gods, and everything was left in ruins. All that normal eyes could see, anyway.
Ona had been better since Camille brought her here. She’d even been up more days than not, cleaning and reorganizing the two little stone houses they had been able to salvage from the weeds and fallen trees and branches.
As for her, she was feeling rested and stronger, though she still had no essence-level sense of what she should do next. Soon enough that answer would be simple: go home.
This was Elana’s heaven. It was Ona’s heaven.
But it wasn’t Camille’s.
She missed her quad. She really missed John. How she’d face any of them, how she’d find words to discuss any of what had happened, how she’d go back to fighting and killing when those things felt abhorrent to her now—these were answers she didn’t have. Not yet.
Camille lowered her arms as more cherry blossoms brushed her cheeks. A light, spicy scent carried through the flowers, something familiar, but very much out of place in the secret gardens of the Valley of the Gods.
She wasn’t sure if her mind was playing tricks on her, but her gold-laced hand gave a whispery tingle. Her heart started to beat, not scared, no, never afraid, just hopeful when she didn’t have any right to hope.
Camille turned, and he was standing only a few feet from her, a vision in the cherry blossoms. A vision wearing jeans and a black NYPD T-shirt.
John looked pale and rattled, and Camille couldn’t quite believe he’d found her, much less been willing to stride into his own personal torture chamber to get to her. He had horrible nightmares about this place, and he probably had no idea where to fit the chaotic, overgrown gardens he’d never seen in those terrible dreams.
She wanted to go to him, wanted that more than anything, but she couldn’t read him past the distress lingering at his edges. His green eyes studied her, wide and dark, full of confusion and uncertainty.
“Your quad’s fine and they want you back real soon,” he said. “Nobody’s angry. Everybody understands.”
He didn’t say, Everybody but me, but she saw it in his face.
“I—” she started, but faltered.
What did she really want to say?
I’m sorry.
I think I’m more sane now.
I’m here.
I love you.
I want to put my arms around you.
All of those things. So she said them, one at a time, watching him for any sign of reaction.
John let her finish, and he just kept looking at her. Another long few seconds crept by before he said. “You, standing in that rain of cherry blossoms, no question you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever seen.”
Camille’s throat got dry and tight. Petals landed on her shoulders, her face, and they were landing on John, too, dropping into his dark hair like otherworldly decorations. She lifted her gold-laced hand for him to see, in case he hadn’t noticed it in their few minutes back at the aqueduct before she … before she’d gone back on her word to him and run away to this place.
“Fancy jewelry.” John glanced at the hand from a couple of angles. “Better watch out or you’ll be starting trends. Is it dangerous?”
“It might be.”
He nodded. Let it go. She could tell her strange new filigree tattoo didn’t bother him at all, but whatever he was about to say, it was making him nervous.
“I couldn’t figure out what kind of universe would make me come back here, to the place where all my troubles began, but now I know that it’s a fair one. A merciful one.” John curled his fingers, then let them relax again, and he seemed to be letting go of the past with every word he spoke. “If having you in my life is the trade-off for everything I had to go through, then I’d say that’s a square deal.”
“John—”
He held up his hand, then lowered it, and lowered his head, too. When he spoke, each word was careful, and she knew he had opened his heart wide. “Do you really want me, Camille? Because I can’t stand to hold you again, then have to let you go.”
The ache in his voice nearly melted her heart, and it definitely melted away the last of her insecurities and worries. Camille ran the few steps to John, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as he picked her straight up off the ground and held her against him.
“Don’t ever let me go again,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that the first time you ever held me, and the next time, and the time after that.”
“If I’d gotten those instructions, I damned sure would have followed them.” He kissed her neck. “You need to quit holding back on me.”
“I want to kiss you. I want to make love to you. I want you to touch me until I can’t even breathe. How’s that?”
“Better.” He kissed her lips next, slow and deep and long, and she forgot about everything beyond his mouth, his tongue, and the cherry blossoms tickling their ears and necks and shoulders. His hands moved like he had a map of all the perfect places to touch and knew exactly how much pressure to apply. She couldn’t think straight. Didn’t care. All she wanted was to feel him, taste him, and be his again.
His lips pressed harder against hers as his tongue moved deeper, filling her up and promising hours of love-making, days of pleasure—and she knew this man could deliver. When he left her mouth, his lips touched her cheeks, her nose, her forehead, then her eyes. In that low, low voice, he said, “You’re even softer than I remembered.”
Camille kissed him again and nibbled at his mouth, drunk with him, absorbed by how he felt and how she felt now that she was finally in his arms again. “Are we starting over, John?”
“What, and go through all that waiting again? No way in hell. We’re starting from here.”
She stared at him, looking deep into his eyes, as far as she could see. “Do I still know your soul?”
“You helped make it what it is today.” He brushed her mouth with his. “Do I know yours?”
“I think
so. I hope so. I’ll open it up and let you study every inch, if that’s what you want.”
He went very still in her embrace. “What I want is you, and not just here, right now. It’s after, Camille, and I want you forever.”
She brushed flower blossoms out of his hair. “You really do believe in happily ever after, don’t you?”
He kissed her again. “I believe it, and if you say yes to being mine, I’ve got it.”
“Yes.”
“That fast?” He eyed her, starting to tease a little. “No catches? No conditions?”
She gave it some thought. “Make love to me. Cover me up with cherry blossoms and stay inside me for hours.”
Camille felt the instant response of his body, the tightening of his muscles, the swell of hard warmth against her belly. When she looked up, she expected to see desire, maybe even happiness, but the man had his eyes closed and he was swearing under his breath.
“What? You don’t want?”
“It’s not that.” The look he gave her was full of physical suffering and resignation. “It’s just … well, I didn’t come alone.”
They found them in Ona’s little stone house, and the two old Sibyls weren’t talking.
Elana had her hands on Ona’s face, tracing every scar, inch by inch, learning her sister Sibyl as she was today. Ona’s good eye looked more focused than Camille had ever seen it, and she had her palms just above Elana’s, now and again brushing her fingertips against Elana’s knuckles. There was none of the awkwardness Camille would have expected, none of the hesitance. What she felt in the little stone house was joy, and relief, and life. A coming back, a reuniting, and a wholeness.
This was right in the universe. This was something that was supposed to happen.
She and John slipped out without saying a word, and together they walked back to the orchard, back to the cherry blossoms, which had formed a delightful soft carpet in the thick grass.
“Andy’s taking Elana to Motherhouse Kérkira,” John said. “What’s going to happen to Ona then?”
Camille glanced over her shoulder, back toward the stone house. “After seeing them together again, I think Ona will go with Elana.”
John’s eyebrows lifted. “To live with the water Sibyls? Ona? Wouldn’t that be ironic?”
“Andy has a fine sense of irony, and she’s not afraid of a little conflict and emotion.” Camille stopped walking in the middle of the blossoms and turned to face John. “Just look at whom she lives with. She’ll find a place for Ona, and something useful for her to do, if that’s what they all choose.”
John put his hands on Camille’s waist. “Think they’ll be busy for a while back at that stone house?”
Camille’s heart fluttered. “Probably.”
“How does the first day of summer sound?” John’s gaze was intense.
“For what?”
“For me marrying you.” He picked up a handful of cherry blossoms and sprinkled them over her fingers. “I don’t have the ring yet, but maybe these will do?”
She watched the petals trickle through her fingers and drift down to her bare feet. “They’re perfect.”
“Was that a yes?”
“I already said yes.”
“But I didn’t meet your conditions.” He swept her up in his arms, cradling her this time, and before Camille could sort out what conditions he was talking about, he had her down in the flower petals, and she was gazing up at him, loving the tenderness she saw in his green eyes, loving the soft way he touched her, so careful and slow, making sure she had exactly what she wanted.
“Conditions,” she whispered as he lowered his mouth to hers. “Conditions … oh, yeah. Make love to me. Cover me up with cherry blossoms and stay inside me for hours. Does that sound like a challenge to you?”
His grin came fast and warm, and he kissed her for a long, long time before his rumbling voice gave her fresh, sweet chills. “I don’t walk away from challenges, beautiful. Not ever.”
( acknowledgments )
I would very much like to thank my agent, Nancy Yost, for helping me get this series off the ground, then helping me stay on track. Additional and equal thanks to my understanding and patient editor, Kate Collins, for her thorough reads and excellent suggestions. It’s always a stronger book when she finishes reading it and giving me her ideas. Thanks, also, to Kate’s assistant, Kelli Fillingim, who keeps me from forgetting important things like when my book is due, where I’m supposed to send it, my last name, my birthday—well, you get the idea. Everyone at Random House/Ballantine works together to make the process smooth and sane for writers.
With each book I do, I find I focus more and more on my readers. I want each story to reward fans of the series and interest new readers, too. In the end, it’s all about you, and I’m honored to have the chance to offer you this installment of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood.
Read below for an excerpt from
CAPTIVE HEART
by Anna Windsor
Sibyls.
Jack Blackmore stood on a rickety Greek dock staring across the sunlit waves of the Ionian Sea. He had come to paradise. He should be enjoying himself, but instead he was thinking about Sibyls.
Saul Brent, one of the few men who called Jack a friend, yanked at a rusty pull chain on the boat they were supposed to take to the island of Kérkira, but the battered skiff’s engine wouldn’t catch. “Son of a bitch,” Saul muttered, giving the chain another jerk.
Shirtless, tattooed, and with his brown hair barely crammed into a ponytail, Saul looked more like a biker on spring break than a decorated soldier and career police officer. His years undercover for vice and narcotics seemed to be etched into his essence. Saul’s swearing did nothing to ease Jack’s mind, and neither did the warm air or the scents of wet sand and salt.
Sibyls were still a puzzle to him.
He didn’t like puzzles.
Every time he dealt with Sibyls, he seemed to do something wrong. He didn’t like wrong.
Jack frowned at paradise.
He’d fought demons easier to get along with than the Sibyl warriors of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood—especially the one he had come to Greece to see. What the hell was he doing, trying to make nice with the most unreasonable woman he’d ever met? A woman with elemental powers so vast they defied his understanding. She’d already tried to kill him twice. Maybe the third time, she’d get the job done.
The engine caught, but Jack didn’t make a move to get into the boat.
“Second thoughts?” Saul asked as he struggled with the last rope lashing their skiff to the dock.
Jack wondered if his features mirrored his career like Saul’s did, if his years in the Army and gray ops, both internationally and stateside, showed like subtle scars on his face.
“No second thoughts,” he said in answer to Saul’s question before considering whether he was telling the truth. Jack considered himself an honest man, but he never said much about what was really on his mind. Training—and reflex.
Saul snickered as he worked the rope’s last knot. “The thought of seeing her, it’s got you nervous, doesn’t it?”
Jack didn’t answer, but he got into the skiff. He wasn’t nervous. He didn’t do nervous. The reason his gut was tight—well. Just a lot riding on this little visit to Motherhouse Kérkira.
“She might finally drown you this time,” Saul said over the roar of the engine as he steered them into the deep blue waters of the channel.
The skiff lurched, and Jack had to catch himself on the splintery rail. Sea spray coated his face, cooling him enough to say, “She’ll hear me out. She thinks more like us than like the Dark Crescent Sisterhood.”
“Andy Myles stopped being a police officer the minute she snapped her pretty fingers and summoned her first tidal wave.” Saul gestured behind them, in the general direction of Mount Olympus and Motherhouse Greece, home base of the air Sibyls, where they had started this little late-afternoon odyssey. “She hasn’t been in training since
birth like the rest of them, but she’s a Sibyl now, and you haven’t made many friends among the chicks in leather.”
Jack thought about the elementally protected bodysuits the Sibyls wore into battle, and about how the tight black leather hugged every enticing inch of Andy’s body. His fingers tightened on the skiff’s railing until his knuckles hurt.
Let it go.
Yeah. Because he was good at letting things go. No distractions. Not on a mission.
Saul stayed quiet for a minute or two, then came back with, “You still haven’t told me what you want with her.”
“I want her back in New York City.” Jack made himself ease up on the boat’s railing before he broke the damned thing. “I want her mind on operations and planning. I’ve read her notes and reports—she’s one of the best analysts in the Occult Crimes Unit.”
“She’s a Sibyl now.” Saul cut to the left and pointed them toward the island they sought. “One of the few water Sibyls on the planet. Did it ever occur to you that Andy has other shit to do? That she might not be willing to come running just because the great Jack Blackmore gives her a summons?”
Jack considered various answers, but he kept coming back to one obvious fact and the thing he couldn’t stop believing about Andy Myles. “Once a cop, always a cop. If I ask her, she’ll come.”
Saul’s brown eyes narrowed. “When you took your little sabbatical at the Sibyl Motherhouses and came back all Zen, I thought you’d changed—but you’re still the same cold bastard. Everyone and everything exists just to get you what you want.”
“Not what I want.” Jack went back to strangling the boat’s railing. “What we need.”
“Who is we this week, Jack? The Army? The FBI? You and the little voices in your head?”
“The NYPD. The OCU.” Jack didn’t expect Saul to understand or even to believe him, which was a good thing, because Saul laughed his ass off as he whipped the skiff through the crystalline waters leading to the tip of Kérkira.