Captive Soul

by Anna Windsor

  Camille stood there gasping for air, feeling weird and stupid, then looked at her hands and the practice sword to see if she was growing scales or hair or something that would have scared the older girls that badly.

  It was right about then that she felt it.

  A strange pulse of energy behind her, something she’d never even sensed before—and it was strong. And dark. And moving up from the earthen tunnels beneath Motherhouse Ireland.

  Something was coming, and Maggie and Carlyn and Lee had seen it and had run away. Camille didn’t want to turn around, and she didn’t want to keep standing there, either. Her heart squeezed and froze, slowing its pounding until she got dizzy. She couldn’t keep standing there. But she did, because she couldn’t figure out what else to do. Her vision swam until she was sure she’d faint. She had nothing but a wooden sword and a busted hand. Fear flooded into her mouth like bitter copper, choking her, making her breathe even harder, like she really was dying of a heart attack.

  You’re a Sibyl, she told herself, but Maggie’s taunts lingered in her mind. Too little. Too quiet.

  “I’m a fire Sibyl,” she said out loud. Her hands shook harder. Remnant smoke drifted all around her, settling in the corridor like a thin white fog.

  A noise sounded behind her, like a strangled scream, hoarse and crackly and utterly terrifying.

  Camille had been in battle training since she could walk. It was stupid to let an enemy take her from behind. She had no defenses—unless she turned around.

  Goddess, she didn’t want to do that.

  The scent of sulfur and hot metal drifted through the waning haze surrounding Camille.

  The scary noise went right on, making her skin tighten and crawl, but it didn’t seem to be coming any closer.

  Turn around, she told herself, but her cursed weak knees wouldn’t obey. Turn around, coward.

  Legs leaden and wobbly, Camille felt a fresh wash of the strange energy, but as it touched her, it didn’t feel so strange. It felt metallic and warm and powerful, yet familiar. Fire Sibyl energy, but very unusual. An image of her mother danced through her mind, but her mother had been killed in battle in some faraway city, and that was a whole year ago.

  The energy wrapped her and fueled her, chasing back her fear and steadying her knees and hands. She used the momentum to make her head move, then her shoulders and torso and hips and legs, until she was finally, finally widening her stance, pivoting, still holding her wooden sword tight as she turned to find—

  The smallest person she had ever seen, standing directly in the middle of the corridor behind her.

  Camille stopped breathing for a moment.

  The woman was dressed in a black tunic and breeches, which was odd in a place where most grown women wore green robes, but her clothing wasn’t what riveted Camille’s attention. No. It was the woman’s face that absorbed every ounce of her awareness. Her bald head, smooth and spotted as a pheasant egg on a forest floor, gleamed in the light of the single sconce above her. The skin below that was white, with a thick, knotty scar over her puckered, empty left eye. Her damaged mouth was partially open, like she was about to snarl or breathe fire all over Camille, and Camille had to battle with her own insides not to slam her eyes closed.

  This woman was almost too scary to look at directly, like some taibhse, a ghost, come back from the dead still bearing the wounds that killed it. Very few fire Sibyls ever got burned, much less scarred, given how well and fast Sibyls healed, so what had happened to her?

  “Who are—what—” Camille couldn’t find the right question, and she ended up with, “Are you a Mother?”

  The scarred woman’s dangerous expression faltered and shifted. She made a terrible crackly wheezing sound, her one eye fixed so hard and harshly on Camille that it watered from lack of blinking. That wheezing came again, louder, longer, and Camille began backing away from her. If she could make it a few steps, she could turn, maybe run far enough and fast enough before the old ghost could catch her or knock her silly and burn her with a fire blast.

  But—

  Wait.

  The woman wasn’t wheezing at all.

  She was … laughing.

  Camille’s heart raced and raced, but she kept herself steady, staring at the scarred lips, which were turning upward as much as the scars allowed. A few seconds later, words cranked out of the woman’s injured mouth, raspy and slow, like she hadn’t spoken in years. “Mother.” She wheeze-laughed some more. “I am … many things … never that. Never.” When she finished seeming to hurt herself with the laughter, she spoke more plainly, adding, “I’m ancient and decrepit and ugly, so I can see where you’d make such a mistake.”

  Ancient and decrepit—was she joking about the Mothers? Had she just called the Mothers ugly? Camille’s eyes narrowed with surprise. Nobody joked about the Mothers, even out of earshot. They had ways of hearing everything.

  “My name is Ona,” said the scarred woman, and Camille flinched.

  “Ona,” she repeated, not quite believing that could be true. She’d heard stories, just like every adept in training. A few whispers and snatches before the Mothers glared or sent singeing blasts at their butts, hissing about the dangers of rumor and folly.

  Oldest living Sibyl …

  Something dark …

  Something unspeakable …

  Monster …

  Camille had heard that Ona had turned into something less than human. Some girls said she was a vampire or an old-style witch, or maybe a werewolf. For her part, Camille had always imagined Ona as one of those shadow creatures who slinked up to kids’ beds at night and snatched them over the side, carrying them away forever, maybe to feed them to scary demons.

  She had no idea what to say to this tiny woman, not at all a monster even with those horrible scars, so she settled on, “I—I didn’t think you were real.”

  Camille realized her voice sounded almost reverent, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t every day she got to look one of Motherhouse Ireland’s legends and mysteries right in the face. Then she noticed that Ona wasn’t smoking from the arms and shoulders like most fire Sibyls did even in civil conversation. Until that second, Camille had never met another fire Sibyl who didn’t smoke.

  “I’m real enough,” Ona said. “And so are you.”

  Camille blinked at the little apparition as her features seemed to shift and change in the torchlight. Tiny chills broke out along her neck and shoulders, and she had to go stiff to keep from shaking all over.

  I’m real.

  What did Ona mean by that? It had to be important, but Camille felt too jumbled to work it out.

  “You’ll understand one day.” Ona’s words conveyed a certainty Camille didn’t feel. “Now go. Study. Learn what you can. The universe will teach you the rest when the time comes.”

  Was she about to leave?

  No!

  Camille didn’t want her to leave. She wanted to run toward Ona and grab her so she couldn’t get away, but a small, sane part of her brain told her that would be a really bad idea. “I try to do my best, really, I mean it, but the other girls—”

  “Won’t bother you in the future.” Ona’s smile terrified Camille way more than her strange energy or her scars, and put to rest any thought of chasing after the old woman, or even trying to find her later in the dark tunnels under Motherhouse Ireland. “I’ll pay them a visit. We’ll have … tea and a chat.”

  Camille tried to figure out how to answer, but before she could, the sconce overhead flickered, and Ona was gone.

  Camille gaped at the spot where the old woman had been standing.

  Ona hadn’t walked away or run or jumped or anything.

  She was just … gone.

  That wasn’t possible.

  Real flesh-and-blood women didn’t disappear like spirits. They couldn’t just evaporate into thin air. And Ona—she’d been real enough for Maggie, Carlyn, and Lee to see her and be terrified and run away from her.

  Camille had a s
udden image of the three older girls sitting with cups and saucers in shaking hands, trying to have a “chat” with the monster who lived underneath Motherhouse Ireland. She could almost see their huge, white-ringed eyes as they tried not to spill their tea, as they tried not to scream or run or make complete fools of themselves.

  Laughter burst up Camille’s throat before she could stop it, echoing in the empty stone corridor. She felt older than she had an hour ago, though she didn’t know why. She had a sense that Ona would be true to her word, that life would be different from now on, but she couldn’t say how, or if everything would be better or much, much worse.

  “Everything just changed,” she said out loud, wondering if she was still in trouble—maybe worse trouble than ever.

  Camille figured it might take a very long time to answer that question.

  ( 1 )

  July

  Something was following her through Central Park.

  Camille wasn’t sure about many things other than the fact that she shouldn’t be out at night without her quad, her fighting group, searching the streets and parks of New York City alone—but she sensed a presence lurking through the darkness behind her, somehow just out of her sight and awareness.

  She knew it was there.

  She knew he was there, as surely as she saw lights twinkling in skyscrapers rising over the imposing dark edge of Umpire Rock.

  Whatever it was, it just felt—male.

  But it didn’t feel completely human.

  “What am I doing?” she muttered to herself. It wasn’t like she could whip out her cell and make a quick call, because cell phones never survived Sibyl energy longer than a few hours. Neither did handhelds, computers—laptop or desktop—or any other fancy electronics.

  “I mean seriously, what the hell am I doing out here alone?”

  But the answer came immediately to her in the form of three faces—Bela Argos Sharp, Dio Allard, and Andy Myles—the earth Sibyl, air Sibyl, and water Sibyl in her quad. Those three women had been willing to take a chance on her, to welcome her into a fighting group even though all the Sibyls in her first group had been killed. Even though she’d been hiding away from the world for years. Even though her own Sibyl Mothers had tried to convince them that Camille was unstable and unworthy.

  Bela, Dio, and Andy.

  That’s why she was out here with whatever was sneaking across the park behind her, probably figuring she didn’t know it was there. Camille intended to protect Bela, Dio, and Andy from the consequences of a big mistake she’d made, so she had to keep working on the one thing she was good at—pyrosentience. And she had a demon to find.

  Not just any demon. An ancient tiger-monster known as a Rakshasa.

  Rakshasa were shape-shifters who could travel as blue flames, adopt one natural human form for long periods, and imitate just about anybody for a few minutes at a time. They had no conscience, no mercy. They were totally evil, and they were a bitch to bring down. Last year Camille had let one of them escape a firefight with her quad, Strada, a Rakshasa leader who was likely to hunt them all down to get his revenge for the ass kicking his little army had taken from the Sibyls. The demons had fled New York City, but Camille knew that was temporary. They wouldn’t stay gone forever, especially not Strada. She had made a terrible error in judgment that left her quad at risk, and if she had to come out every single night her quad wasn’t on patrol and flex her pyrosentience trying to track the furry bastard, she’d do it to set that mistake right.

  The coin on the chain around her neck, a strange and unusual talisman given to her by—well, something that never should have had a generous impulse—lay still and cool against her skin, held close by her tight cotton undershirt. The coin was an ancient Afghan dinar, used in the time of the Kushan emperor Huvishka, thousands of years ago. It reacted to and repelled Rakshasa, but it also had properties that allowed elemental energy to move through it, so she could use it to enhance her own abilities. Well, her one very solid elemental ability—pyrosentience.

  Rather than pulling fire to her or creating it from the core ingredients in the atmosphere, she could pull the energy into her and release it again, mingled with her own essence and super-focused on the purpose she intended. Focusing projected fire energy allowed her to read the environment around her even if she couldn’t blow shit up and burn down buildings with a snap of her fingers. She could gain a better understanding of objects, people, and other types of energy by sending her awareness out through her fire energy, then drawing it back and trying to understand what she had sensed. With pyrosentience, she could track almost anything, so long as it came into contact with the world’s ambient or actual fire.

  The dinar could also help her magnify the fire energy she took in with her pyrosentience, but that drained her down to nothing, and usually it wasn’t worth the price. She shouldn’t count on the coin to help her shore up her weaker talents. Using the dinar that way could be unpredictable and dangerous, and the Mothers didn’t approve of it, though they had stopped short of forbidding it, just like they had screeched to a halt just shy of forbidding her to use the coin altogether.

  Well, screw the Mothers. Let them think about how small and quiet and weak she was, how she wasn’t worth assigning to a fighting group, and how they had no idea why Bela chose her and went to war with the meanest Mother in Ireland to get her. Camille was using the dinar whether they liked it or not. In fact, she had learned to make metal that was similar in its properties, and she had given her whole quad projective charms with the same capacity—and they were using those charms whenever they wanted, too. Her quad had unusually good sentient abilities, which was one reason they were more compatible than anyone had thought they would be.

  Usually paranormal energy made the dinar vibrate, heat up, or both, but tonight Camille was getting nothing. She might as well have been wearing costume jewelry from a secondhand store.

  Instead of comforting her, the dinar’s inactivity made her more nervous. Whatever was following her might be powerful enough to know how to regulate its elemental signature and keep itself concealed. That meant it wasn’t the demon she was looking for, but it might be something just as bad, or worse.

  Camille kept to the edges of Heckscher Playground, out of the open expanses. Leaves rustled above her head, and a faint breeze raised chills along her neck and shoulders even though the air was still seasonably warm. The night smelled like freshly mowed grass and dirt from the nearby ball fields, and the playground itself radiated the salty, happy smell of all the children who had occupied the big space earlier in the day.

  Whatever was following Camille, she didn’t think it was happy. Sibyls could sense states and traits, and fire Sibyls were particularly adept at judging emotional energy. The strange part was, she didn’t pick up much negative feeling from the thing. It seemed … intent. Almost overly focused on its mission—which appeared to be following her.

  Well, that’s nothing new in my life, is it?

  Camille had spent more hours than she cared to count sneaking through Motherhouse Ireland to dodge other adepts hunting for her, or hiding out in one of the castle’s hidden rooms to avoid angry Mothers who wanted to teach her a lesson. She could hold her own in any battle, but when everybody wanted to pick a fight at the same time, she had learned it was best to minimize opportunities.

  Not exactly what she was doing now, out alone in Central Park, almost daring something to give her grief.

  Camille walked faster, purposeful, not panicked. She wasn’t prey, so she didn’t intend to look like prey. She tugged the zipper on her battle leathers as high as it would go. The bodysuit was designed and treated to deflect elemental energy, but it didn’t shield her from a fresh round of shivers. She thought about pulling on the leather face mask she had stuffed in her pocket. Thought about it, but didn’t do it. The stupid thing made her feel like she was suffocating.

  Camille’s fingers flexed. The worn ivory hilt of her Indian shamshir felt cool as she brushed her p
alm against it, though these days she usually called the weapon by its Americanized name—scimitar—because she heard that so often from her quad. Her mother had given her the weapon before she died, and she had taught Camille how to take a head with a single strike. Scimitars had a curved edge made for hacking, and Camille liked the fact that nobody expected a small woman to draw such a long, deadly blade, much less swing it like the Grim Reaper.

  Everyone except her quad underestimated her strength—physical, emotional, and otherwise. Since she sucked at making fire, enemy misperceptions about her abilities were her greatest advantage in any type of fight.

  Her heart rate picked up to a steady beat-beat-beat.

  Would she be taking a head tonight?

  Camille moved quietly around a copse of trees and bushes, letting the thing behind her gain a few steps. If this needed to come to blows, it was better that she pick the moment and the location. Yes. This little clearing would do. Shielded from view, plenty of moonlight, enough room to swing, but not enough room for too many surprises.

  Her mouth felt dry when she tried to swallow. Her quad would be so pissed if she got herself beaten to death or eaten tonight. They’d have no idea why she was out without them, or what she was doing—or that she was doing it for them, to make up for that big mistake.

  Let’s get this over with.

  As soon as Camille heard the rustle of brush near the clearing she had picked, she ripped her scimitar from its sheath, spun toward the noise, and pulled the blade back for a strike.

  The thing in the bushes went totally still.

  Camille blinked at the spot where all sound had stopped. She had expected the creature to run or fight, not just stand there and wait for her to hack it to death. What the hell was that about?