by Anna Windsor
“You’re full of shit,” Saul called over the roar of the engine and the slap of the boat through the waves.
Meaning, When you’re finished with whatever has your interest, you’ll leave New York City and the OCU in your rearview mirror just like you’ve left everywhere else.
Probably true.
Thanks to some pretty bad shit in his childhood, Jack had no real ties, not to any person or any place. Once upon a time, the Army had saved his life. He’d become a soldier, a commander who knew who he was, where he was supposed to be, and what he was supposed to be doing. Then he watched a bunch of tiger-demons crawl out of the Valley of the Gods in Afghanistan, the blood of his unit dripping from their claws and fangs, and he lost track of life’s basics even though he always warned his men never to do that.
The tiger-demons, the Rakshasa, had been his reason for existing—or at least his reason for being a single-minded, single-purposed bastard—since the Gulf War, but they were dead now. The darkness he had tracked for years had been scrubbed from the planet.
But he could always find more darkness.
New York City was as good a place as any. For now.
As if he had heard Jack’s thoughts, Saul made a vicious cut with the rudder and the skiff scooted sideways. If Jack hadn’t had a good grip on the rail, he’d have busted his face on the rough floorboards.
“When Andy decides to kick your ass all over the island, don’t ask me for any help,” Saul said. “I’m gonna hoot until I piss myself. And I’m staying on the boat. You’re on your own with this one.”
Jack studied the sands of the fast-approaching island as he tried to clear his mind and get ready to engage the—what? Enemy? Friendly? Hydra monster in a gorgeous redhead suit?
Damn, but the skiff’s railing felt flimsy in his choke hold.
Even if Jack wasn’t too sure about his own character, he had no doubt that Saul was an honest man. If Andy decided to wash Jack back to New York City, he was on his own—and Saul might very well get his chance to keep laughing.
One day you’re a good cop with a decent career in New York City.
The next day you’re the world’s only water Sibyl, a warrior of the Dark Crescent Sisterhood sworn to protect the weak from the supernaturally strong.
And not too long after that, you’re standing at the bottom of the Ionian Sea in your underwear, nose to beak with a big-ass octopus.
“Normal people don’t have to deal with this shit.” Andy Myles didn’t dare take her eyes off the octopus to glare at her companion, a woman so ancient she looked more crusty than the debris in the shell midden under the octopus. Bubbles rose with each word, and Andy breathed in warm, salty breaths of her element, still amazed that she didn’t need gills to treat water like air.
Aquahabitus. That’s the fancy term for me being able to live underwater like a happy clam. See? I’m remembering more of this crap every day.
The octopus blew a load of black ink in Andy’s face and scooted off across the seafloor, leaving tiny bursts of sand and rock in its wake.
Andy waved the stinky black cloud out of her face, but melanin coated her floating red curls. The effect was interesting. She had never given much thought to trying purple highlights. “Add this to the list of shit normal people don’t have to deal with—what color will a wart with legs stain my hair today?”
“You frightened the octopus,” Elana told Andy as her silver robes absorbed some of the coloring. “To approach water’s many creatures, you must keep a broad view, a strong sense of purpose, and peace in your own heart and mind.”
“Wonderful.” Andy glanced down at her purple-stained underwear. “Let’s not schedule any chats with sharks this week.”
Elana stared at Andy, her eerie white eyes conveying nothing but acceptance. Andy wondered how much Elana saw, even though theoretically she saw nothing at all. How the hell did she stay so calm about everything?
“Let’s finish for the day,” Elana suggested. “You had quite a bit of success with the fish earlier.”
“Sure. Three fin wounds and one tail in the face. I did great.” Andy raised her fingers to the iron crescent moon charm she wore around her neck and watched currents rinse her curls, but shades of purple remained. Camille, the fire Sibyl in her quad, had made the charm for Andy. The metal’s special properties increased Andy’s aquasentience—her ability to move water through her essence and sense or track whatever the water might have touched—but of course, it couldn’t do much to wash away octopus dye.
“The sea senses your unrest and it answers with its own.”
“The sea senses I have no idea why I’m playing with fish instead of working with adepts or sailing back to New York City to fight with my quad.” Andy let go of the necklace.
Elana sent bubbles of laughter swirling around her silver hair. “Water’s creatures can teach you acceptance, my dear. They can teach you about vast freedom within vast limitations. We’ll keep trying.”
She offered Andy her small, wrinkled hand, and together they drifted up the slope of the seafloor, closer and closer to the sparkling blue surface above. The day had been bright and warm when they walked into the depths, and heat kissed Andy’s freckled cheeks as waves gently helped the two women forward.
Her ears worked as well as her lungs when she was immersed in her element, but the world of water sounded so different from the world of air—richer, more nuanced, and unbelievably detailed. The slightest whistle carried for miles, like the swish of a tail or the crack of a tooth on a shell, and all the while, the ebb and flow of tides all over the world made a whispering beat, beat, beat she had come to know like her own thoughts. She had become fair at estimating how far sounds had traveled, and at judging their source and trajectory.
A slice-and-push noise caught her attention, and she glanced toward the Greek mainland. “Boat,” she told Elana, but of course Elana already knew that.
“Five minutes until it arrives,” Elana said.
Andy’s head broke the surface. Ahead of her lay the steeply sloped beaches of Kérkira, where her Motherhouse had been hastily constructed. Andy could see its single turret peeking over the rise of the nearest hill. Elana’s head didn’t break through to air for a few more strides.
As they got a little closer to the beach, the small Motherhouse, tucked into a small, heavily treed valley near the ruins of old Turkish fortifications, came into clear view.
The place … lacked a little something. Like, maybe, sanity?
Air Sibyls, earth Sibyls, and fire Sibyls had built it all together and in one huge hurry when Andy first manifested her talent for working with water. Water Sibyls had been extinct for a thousand years, and their training facility, Motherhouse Antilla, had been destroyed in the tidal wave that wiped them out. Once Andy had started working with water, younger water Sibyls began appearing and seeking training, and these girls couldn’t very well hang out in hotels, shelters, or anywhere else that couldn’t tolerate a hefty dose of moisture. So Motherhouse Kérkira had been born, near Motherhouse Greece because air Sibyls had the most to offer in training a clueless water Sibyl. Air, like water, could be vast and fast-moving, difficult to control and unpredictable. Air, more than any other element, could control water, blowing it this way and that—or setting up an impenetrable moving barrier of wind to hold back an accidental tidal surge.
The common areas of the north section had gone up first, with old-style Russian architecture and heavy wooden walls and floors. The barracks in the western section had been laid together with Motherhouse Ireland’s smooth Connemara marble and austere room design, while the kitchen and library in the eastern reaches had the open, airy look of carved crystal that marked Motherhouse Greece. In the middle, good old American brick and mortar formed an entry hall and a formal meeting chamber. Stone, crystal, wood, and brick—Motherhouse Kérkira had come out looking like a twisted fairy-tale castle, or something Picasso might have barfed after a particularly bad bender.
As Andy and El
ana crested like tired waves on the beach, Elana moved her hands over her robes, absorbing all the moisture and dispersing its elemental components back to the universe.
“Aquaterminus.” Andy named the ability before Elana could ask her to say it. “Halting the motion of water or absorbing small amounts. This demands significant energy and can be fatal if done on too large a scale.”
“Excellent.” Elana’s small feet moved effortlessly over rocks and sand and branches as if she could see every hazard and shift in the terrain. “But I sense more unrest. Your tension increased the moment we walked out of the sea, my dear. What is it that troubles you so deeply—and so constantly?”
Andy grabbed her yellow Mother’s robes off the rock where she had draped them. “For starters, I hate yellow. I think it’s a stupid color for water Sibyls.” She pitched the robes back into the waves, feeling satisfaction as the annoying sun-colored cloth whipped under the surface and darkened as it moved out to sea. The nervousness inside her wound tighter even though she was gazing across an endless vista of water and ornate islands. Most people thought the Ionian Islands were perfection itself, but right now they just bugged the hell out of her.
“I don’t know who’s on the boat,” Andy added, fishing for any explanation that might turn out to be the truth about why she was so jumpy when Elana’s only purpose in life seemed to be helping her learn to relax.
Elana cocked her head like she was listening to something. “Yes. There’s disruption onboard the approaching skiff. I won’t deny that.”
Andy squinted toward the mainland and sighed. “I hadn’t picked that up. Thanks. Do you sense more tension now?”
Elana ignored her sarcasm, as she usually did. “What bothered you when we left the waves?”
The cranks in Andy’s depths turned again, ratcheting her muscles. She sensed rushing and overflowing in her own essence, but at the same time, her emotions choked inside. She felt like a river battling beaver dams at every bend and juncture. She needed to kick out some logjams before her brain flooded.
“I don’t know. I don’t … well, the building. The Motherhouse bothers me. You can’t see it, but I’ve told you it’s freaky.” Andy smeared water out of her eyes with both hands, then remembered she could absorb it and dried off her face. “It’s crowded here, and too public, and I’m worried more adepts are on the way. What if one of them makes a mistake and we flood half of Europe?”
Elana’s lips curved at the edges like she might be trying to smile. “Keep going. Let it flow, Andy.”
“Flow. Right. That’s supposed to be my job.” Andy glanced at the tattoo that had marked her right forearm since her Sibyl talents manifested. Earth, fire, air—mortar, pestle, broom—in a triangle around a dark crescent moon. Sibyls worked in fighting groups, with earth Sibyls as mortars, responsible for protecting and leading the group. Fire Sibyls worked as pestles, handling communications, and air Sibyls served as brooms, cleaning up messes, archiving events, and researching information on just about everything. When Andy joined their ranks, Sibyl tattoos all over the world had changed. The lines connecting the symbols went from straight to wavy, symbolizing the role of water Sibyls in a fighting group.
Flow.
She was supposed to attend to the emotional flow and growth of her group.
Whatever the hell that meant.
“I’m a cop and a warrior, Elana.” She lowered her arm, lifted her chin, and blinked at the sudden glare of sunlight off the too-blue sea. “I shoot things. I don’t flow.”
“The longer you live in water, the more water will live in you. Release, Andy.” Elana put her paper-soft hands on Andy’s bare belly. Her dark, damp skin seemed to glitter in all the sunlight. “Tell me all of what’s bothering you. Don’t think. Don’t censor. Just let yourself flow.”
Andy closed her eyes. The beat of the tides swelled in her mind, the gentle pressure of Elana’s hand focused her, and she was able to come up with the next pain on her list. “I miss my quad.”
“Bela, Camille, and Dio are brilliant fighting partners.” Elana’s voice seemed as hypnotic and rhythmic as the waves. “I’m sure they miss you these summer months when you have to be away. What else?”
Andy listened to the water around her, tried to let it wash through her and break free everything crammed in her chest and throat. The air smelled like evergreen and fish and brine. “The beach bothers me. Stupid as this might sound, it feels wrong.”
Elana said nothing. Andy kept her eyes closed, listening to the waves dance with the beach. “The trees bother me. They don’t … they don’t speak to the water like I want them to.”
Andy wondered if Elana was thinking she was screwy, but the old woman just asked, “And?”
And …
Great. She was starting to relax a little more, but only because she didn’t have the energy to fight with more than one emotion at the same time. Gently, she moved Elana’s fingers away from her and opened her eyes. “It’s everything, okay? It’s the whole place. I sort of hate it. No, I actually do hate it. I’ll never get peaceful here without regular shipments of Valium, coffee, and all the chocolate I can eat.”
Elana’s hands came together like a young child clapping. “Good. I agree.”
Andy wasn’t sure she heard that right. “What?”
“This is not the right location for our Motherhouse.” Elana’s white eyes brightened with emotion. “The Motherhouse we water Sibyls build for ourselves—it won’t be here.”
Andy stared at Elana. It had felt like a miracle, finding a single surviving water Sibyl from time before time, fully trained and able to really teach her what it meant to live with water in her soul. Now she was worrying that Elana’s ancient mind might be running dry after all.
Warm breezes teased Andy’s stained hair and underwear, and the afternoon sun baked her freckles. “Build a Motherhouse,” she said. “You and me?”
Elana gestured toward Motherhouse Disastro. “We have the adepts. They’ll help.”
Now Andy’s mouth came open. “We have five teenagers, twenty-two kids, and three infants. Think the babies can hammer a nail?”
“And we have Ona,” Elana said like she hadn’t heard a word Andy spoke. Her robes and hair were completely dry, and she seemed enraptured by whatever she could see in her mind.
Desperate to make Elana talk sense, Andy said, “Ona’s a renegade fire Sibyl who barely talks to anyone but you. And she sort of destroyed the last Motherhouse. And fire Sibyls burn shit up and want everything made of rock. And, and—she’s as old as you are!”
Elana held up two fingers. “Two years older.”
Andy smacked the side of her own head, sending a spray of water over the sand and rocks. “Does that matter when you’re a thousand, for God’s sake?”
Elana paused. “It’s still surprising to hear you call on God instead of the Goddess.”
“I’m from the American South and I didn’t grow up a Sibyl. The whole Goddess thing—I’m ambivalent.” Andy dried off her hands and legs in sheer frustration, soaking the water into her essence and firing it back at the ocean in a fast, arcing plume. “Assuming I go for the insanity of believing we can build our own Motherhouse, where would we put it?”
Elana faced her, her scarred face serious but kind, with that ever-present relaxation she seemed to have when they visited any beach. “Where our hearts take us.”
“That really helps.” Andy drew in more water and shot it out over the sea, using her palm to target the stream. Aquakinesis. She needed a lot more practice with that ability, but she felt a small release every time she did it. Nothing like a little violence to get a girl’s pulse back to normal.
“When the time is right, the place will call to us,” Elana said. “We’ll both know.”
Just the thought of moving her Sibyl training facility to some new and unknown location, never mind building a Motherhouse—Andy wasn’t sure how she was supposed to ever find any peace now.
“Don’t die,” she to
ld Elana. “There’s no way I can fight alongside my quad in New York, figure out all this crap, and build a Motherhouse by myself.”
Elana’s shrug made Andy want to bury herself headfirst in the sand. “I’ll live forever if nothing kills me.”
Andy grimaced because Elana was referring to the fact that not only was she one of the oldest Sibyls in the world, she was also the only half-demon Sibyl … ever. Tiger demons known as Rakshasa had attacked her and infected her a long time ago, but she had survived and lived to help drive the bastards off the face of the planet—twice. Andy felt like she had to protect Elana at all costs, but that would be damned hard if Elana didn’t quit putting herself on the front lines of demon battles.
“Our disruption has arrived.” Elana pointed in the direction of the docks, and Andy saw a man striding toward them.
Weird.
Usually the locals who knew about Motherhouse Salvador Dalí’s Worst Nightmare wouldn’t let anybody approach this end of the island unescorted, much less march right up their private beach to bang on the front door. Which, for the record, was as ugly as the rest of the place, though Motherhouse Russia was quite proud of the carved wolf’s-head door handle.
How had some guy managed to—
Andy looked closer.
The man had coal-colored hair and stoic, handsome features almost too perfectly aligned to be real instead of some Renaissance painter’s fantasy. Those features were familiar, but what she really recognized was his scowl. And who could miss the totally out of place Men in Black suit and the dark sunglasses?
Him.
Here.
Of all places.
Oh, yeah, this was really going to help her relax and focus on learning healing and flow and all that other water Sibyl crap.
“Fuck me.” Andy put her hand on Elana’s shoulder. “It’s Jack Blackmore. Think anybody would care if I drowned him?”