Captive Soul

by Anna Windsor

  It occurred to her to kill the thing first and figure it out later, but what if this creature was friend, not foe? Just because something had powers didn’t make it evil. Sibyls worked with all manner of supernatural practitioners, and even some kinds of man-made demons. Most natural demons—and the man-made kind, too—were nothing but soulless murderers. The Asmodai the crazy Legion cult used to create, for example.

  Camille’s insides clenched.

  No.

  Don’t think about Asmodai.

  Brainless elemental golems. Strong as hell, targeted on one victim, bent on killing no matter what got in their way.

  She’d lost one of her first fighting group to an Asmodai. She would never forget its towering bulk, its blank, hateful face, or the fire pouring out of its mouth and nose and eyes.

  Let it go. Now.

  No time to dwell on Asmodai, because some demons were a lot more complex, and a lot more human. Cursons, half-breeds, with human mothers and human souls, were Sibyl allies now, and so were full-blooded Astaroth demons. Most of those had been human children when they got converted into demons, so they still had human intelligence and emotions. Hell, Cursons and Astaroths had even married Sibyls. And then there was Duncan Sharp, Bela’s husband, a half-human, half-Rakshasa creature called a Bengal. Even their next-door neighbor Mrs. Knight was half demon, a Bengal like Duncan.

  So maybe this thing in the bushes was more like Cursons and Astaroths and Bengals—something new to Sibyls and paranormal police officers of NYPD’s Occult Crimes Unit, but friendly and a little shy. She still didn’t sense any malice from it. It was hard to behead something that gave off the energy of a distracted kitten.

  She could almost see it, a man-like outline in the deep shadows under the trees, but even her sensitive Sibyl vision couldn’t make out details. Weird. Was it doing something to throw off her perceptions?

  “Show yourself,” she demanded. She didn’t make any threats, because Camille never made a threat she didn’t plan to back up in full.

  The thing refused to move, but its energy … it was—what? Amused?

  That pissed her off enough to begin drawing fire power into her essence, intending to use her pyrosentient talents to send the energy back out, to channel it so she could use it to explore Tall, Dark, and Shady Silence over there.

  “You’re out past your bedtime, beautiful,” the thing said to her in a startlingly human voice. “And that’s one hell of a pocketknife.”

  Camille’s grip on her scimitar loosened, and she almost dropped it.

  My big mistake.

  She needed to get hold of herself, but she barely managed a complete breath. It took all she had to keep hold of her blade. She knew she was overreacting, because if this was the Rakshasa she had been looking for, it would have attacked already.

  This was something else. It had to be—but that voice. So raw and low.

  So familiar and enticing.

  She was losing it.

  Even though she’d been searching night after night, she had to admit she’d never expected to actually find what she was looking for, much less have it find her and not try to tear her to pieces.

  If it is him, he’s a deadly demon, and I can’t forget that no matter how many new tricks he’s learned. Not this time.

  But why would he play with her? Rakshasa weren’t prone to dicking around. They killed. Then they ate what they killed. Pretty simple formula.

  “Step out of the shadows and let me see you.” Her voice still had some authority even though she felt like the tree leaves over her head were rustling through her chest and belly instead. Thank the Goddess for small favors, and for scimitars. One look and she’d know if this thing was her demon or something else entirely. “Come out now.”

  “No,” it said, and its tone suggested it didn’t think Camille could force the issue.

  Moonlight spilled into the clearing. Camille knew she was lit up like a silvery neon sign, but the thing in the bushes stayed dark and inscrutable. The sense she had of it now wasn’t demon at all. It was human. Completely.

  Yet not.

  The confusion that had gripped her a year ago, the same confusion that had led her to make that big mistake, seized her again.

  Kill it, she told herself. Don’t take a chance. Chop it into pieces, and if it turns out to be a good guy, apologize to its kin and make peace with them later.

  If it even had any kin.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, and now her voice was shaking like the rest of her. She tightened her arms to make sure her weapon stayed in ready position. “What are you?”

  The thing in the bushes didn’t answer immediately, and the rush of emotion it put off went by too quickly to read.

  Then the dinar resting against Camille’s chest grew faintly warm.

  “You know who I am,” it said, and that intense voice curled across her body like she wasn’t even wearing her battle leathers. She felt the sound everywhere.

  “I don’t.” Too fast. Like a lie, except it wasn’t.

  I do.

  No, she didn’t.

  I’ve sensed this man before.

  But she hadn’t.

  She wished she could stop shaking. She wished her nerves weren’t shivering from the sound of that voice.

  “The Rakshasa demon pride isn’t back in New York City yet,” the thing in the bushes told her, and Camille gave up on her plan to cut it to ribbons.

  She surrendered to the confusion and uncertainty and lowered her scimitar. “How the hell do you know what I’m looking for?”

  The thing let out a breath, actually sounding as tired as she felt. “Because I’m hunting them, too. When those assholes get back to New York, I’ll make sure you know, but don’t come looking for them alone again.”

  “Fuck you.” Camille squinted at the big shadow. “You’re not my mother—but who are you?”

  “You know who I am,” it said again, hot and devil-sexy, and before she could argue, it was gone. Park bushes rustled in its wake, and a soft fall breeze brought his scent back to Camille. Light, spicy, and masculine. The perfect aftershave.

  “Not possible,” she said aloud to nobody as she jammed her scimitar into its sheath. Then, much louder, “Not possible!”

  Her mind pulled away from her and she tried to snatch back her focus, her awareness, but it was too late. The memory from last year struck her with the force of a fist, making her stagger back and sit right down on the wet, dark grass.

  Dio’s voice rang out through the cold, dark alley, strong as the wind. “Camille! Get the demon!”

  Camille charged forward. Strada, a big white-furred monster with claws and fangs like a prehistoric saber-toothed tiger, was choking Duncan Sharp with a gold chain.

  Choking him.

  Choking him to death.

  Not happening.

  Camille launched herself at Strada, swinging her scimitar as she jumped, right at the demon’s head.

  The blade came down in a perfect arc—

  And hit something like electric concrete.

  “Shit!”

  Her voice echoed in her own brain as her bones seemed to compact from the blow and white-hot agony seared every muscle she owned.

  The hilt tore out of her hands. She stumbled to the side, fighting for balance as she saw Duncan’s face go blood red and dark, his eyes closed.

  Dying.

  Seconds left.

  Since Camille had no real fire making to draw on, she knew what she had to do.

  Damnit, no choice.

  She had to!

  Dio and Bela shouted at her, and Andy, too, but Camille got her balance, charged toward Duncan and the demon, and dropped to her knees beside Duncan and the Rakshasa. She pulled deep inside her own power, to her own well of elemental energy, and willed her awareness of fire to bring itself forward.

  Pyrosentience was all about channeling the fire energy, drawing it through her instead of into her. Simple. Different from fire making. Infinitely more
powerful—and infinitely more dangerous. Her whole quad had a touch of sentient gifts with their elements, and the Mothers had all but forbidden them to use these powers, because nobody really knew what could happen.

  “I’m saving Duncan’s life,” she muttered to herself as she opened her senses and tiny lasers of firelight broke across her fingers. Fire energy, pulled through her, escaping to the world again in controlled bursts through her skin.

  She pushed at the demon, but his energy turned hers away.

  Strada tightened his grip on Duncan, who lost consciousness.

  Not strong enough!

  More screaming from her quad—but Camille couldn’t listen to them or Duncan was a dead man and this demon bastard would have them all for dinner. Focusing every bit of her fire awareness into her hands, she grabbed the coin on the end of the chain Strada was using to choke Duncan.

  The dinar, she knew, had projective properties—it could take in energy and feed it out again in big, concentrated blasts. The coin would magnify her pyrosentience hundreds of times over.

  The second she made contact with the metal, it seemed like every stray ounce of fire energy in the universe channeled itself through her.

  Hit by lightning.

  Blown apart.

  Camille screamed as the force of it seemed to tear her apart.

  A roar like a thousand volcanoes erupting crushed against her ears. Her skin—was it coming off?

  All she could do was scream and try to shove back against the onslaught. Barely there. Barely able to focus on anything. She couldn’t possibly be in one piece, but somehow she knew she was, still screaming but making no sound now, eyes open but seeing nothing but a huge swirl of golden, pulsing fire energy going to war with the dark power pouring off the bellowing tiger-demon.

  This time when she hit Strada, she made contact. Enough to get her free hand on the chain. To take control of it and ease the pressure on Duncan’s neck.

  A stench—hot desert winds and fresh blood—

  The connection, Duncan Sharp to her to Strada.

  The golden storm around them—

  Duncan coughing himself back to awareness—

  And then the ghost in Duncan’s head, the ghost of his dead best friend, starting to move, to set itself free and finally fling itself off this mortal coil—

  Camille sat in Central Park, breathing slowly and steadily so that she wouldn’t cry, not wanting to think about what had happened next on that terrible night, but she couldn’t help herself.

  The ghost that was inhabiting Duncan Sharp’s head, a man named John Cole, a man she’d never met before in her life, had suddenly been in that alley beside her. He was there, and then he was gone.

  Only he wasn’t gone.

  Many, many times in Camille’s life, she’d been convinced she was losing her mind, but all of those times paled in comparison to that night, and now this one.

  In that alley, John Cole had been there, with his green eyes and dark hair. She’d touched him inside and out for that one moment. She had seen him, heard him, and smelled that enticing, spicy aftershave she wouldn’t ever forget, and then he was gone.

  He. Wasn’t. Gone.

  “Yes, he was.” Camille scrubbed her palms against her cheeks to keep herself in the now, in today, in the reality of middle-of-the-night and dangerous-as-hell Central Park.

  John Cole was gone.

  She’d told herself this every time she allowed herself to remember what she’d done that night, how she’d saved Duncan and set free the spirit of John Cole. Then how she’d gotten confused and let the demon Strada convince her that somehow the wandering spirit of John Cole had ended up in his body. That’s why she had let Strada escape.

  Damn me.

  Strada had gotten away. Duncan had gotten better. John Cole was gone forever to wherever spirits went after their bodies died.

  I looked in that demon’s eyes, and they were John Cole’s. The demon spoke to me in John Cole’s voice.

  And it had to have been a trick. A brilliant move on Strada’s part to save his demon ass.

  But the way he looked, the way he smelled, that voice …

  Camille wanted to pound her head on the ground.

  The man who’d been following her tonight, she did know him. But she couldn’t, because he couldn’t possibly have been there. Camille was as sure of that as she was of the skyscraper lights, her earlier sense of being followed, and the fact that she shouldn’t be patrolling alone.

  Camille didn’t have a clue what else to do, so she curled up on the grass and hugged her knees to her chest.

  The man who’d been following her tonight couldn’t have been there, because that man—the one man she had ever really, truly, deeply touched, even if only for one literally shining moment inside a shimmering golden cloud of madness—had died a year ago.

  And Camille had just let Strada, leader of the Rakshasa demons, play her all over again.

  ( 2 )

  Jesus, but seeing that woman up close and personal again felt like torture.

  He kept moving, through Central Park, around Central Park, because he didn’t know what else to do. John Cole—on the inside, even if the outside was not what anybody might expect—got far enough away from her that he thought he could keep himself from following her as she headed home. Then he dropped onto a bench on Balcony Bridge because one place was as good as another.

  He leaned forward and let his head hang toward his knees, but that didn’t block his view of the darkened walkway at his feet. In the strange night lighting, it seemed like a cracked stone slab, and his mind flashed on the entrance to that godforsaken temple in the mountains of Afghanistan near Kabul, which he and others had explored during the war. The scorch marks. The heat fissures.

  Looks like it got cooked. That’s what he’d said to one of the ten men from Recon who went with him and the contingent of Vatican priests. Then, to his commander, Jack Blackmore, in lower tones, What the hell are we doing here, Blackjack? What are all these high-level priests doing here? They won’t tell me anything, and I’m supposed to be one of them.

  Standing orders. Blackjack had eyed the big stone door with its burn marks, top to bottom. Twilight made the rock look like it was still on fire. In the distance in the big valley around the temple, John saw shadows and more stones. The ruins of an ancient village? More like a city.

  We’ve had a description of this place since we hit the ground, Blackjack had added. Straight from military intelligence. They left details on what to do if we found it. After another few seconds, Blackjack said, I think the orders are old. Like, passed down for decades. Maybe centuries.

  Great. John remembered thinking that. Old orders about some ancient temple. That can’t be good.

  Blackjack had pulled out then, taking half of Recon with him to seal the valley and deploying the rest to form a perimeter around the temple. John’s instructions were simple enough: get the priests into the temple, let them do whatever it was they had to do, then get them back out again. Recon would escort them back to the valley’s mouth, then they’d all beat it back to camp before they got their asses shot off.

  Only it hadn’t quite worked out that way.

  Stop.

  Leave it alone.

  John refused to let the tension in his neck and shoulders get worse. He wouldn’t let the memories roll over him again, not here, not now. Too many years and too many miles ago, not that he’d ever get the war or the Valley of the Gods out of his mind and heart, no matter how far and how fast he ran, and no matter how much he tried to atone.

  Camille—she was like that, too. Lodged inside him, maybe forever.

  She was as beautiful as he remembered.

  “You don’t know anything about her,” he reminded himself, his voice seeming to echo across the deserted bridge. “She’s nothing but a fantasy to you.”

  Only that wasn’t really true, was it? He’d spent some time with Camille Fitzgerald and all the Sibyls in the South Bronx fighting
quad after his best buddy, Duncan Sharp, got himself attacked by Rakshasa demons. John had died trying to save Duncan from John’s worst enemies, the creatures he had been hunting every single day of his life since he accidentally helped set them free from their prison in the Valley of the Gods.

  John’s body had died, but a strange paranormal accident involving the ancient dinar John had given to Duncan to shield him from the Rakshasa had left John’s spirit alive and well and hanging out in Duncan’s head—until Camille had done whatever it was she did in that alley.

  Golden light.

  John remembered that, and he remembered giving her the dinar she now wore around her neck, but more than anything, John remembered her. The light in her eyes. The rich tones of her auburn hair. The feel of her, not just physically but spiritually. It was like he had moved through everything that made her. Like he had connected with her on every level.

  Yeah.

  On his way to this new body, which she could never see. She or any of her Sibyl buddies.

  That thought brought him more grief than he expected, the kind of grief he remembered from the war, when somebody had died right beside him—or when he’d seen the Rakshasa start to take down Duncan Sharp, the only person in the world he’d truly cared about saving until he touched Camille.

  The possibility of never really seeing her again, except from a distance, of never getting to truly talk to her or know her or hold her—it kicked him in the gut so hard he wanted to roar.

  And something was roaring.

  That was the real bitch of this whole situation, wasn’t it?

  John almost laughed out loud, but he was afraid it would be a madman’s lunatic braying, because something in his mind was definitely making a lot of noise. The thing in his mind, it wasn’t quite dead or alive, but he knew it was dangerous. And definitely, definitely evil.

  Dark energy surged forward, wrong energy, perverted and twisted and nauseating. John slammed his head against his fists, letting the shock of pain help him focus. Bile surged in his throat, and the darkness around him swam in sickening, expanding, contracting ways.

  In his days as a priest, before he lost his faith and his collar and his freedom, John had known true evil like the thing in his head, but he had never known insanity up close. Crazy had to feel like this, taste like this, smell like this. He was crazy now, and that’s all that was left of him.