Captive Soul

by Anna Windsor

  Camille let go of Bela’s hand and stopped her pull on the fire energy.

  If she was tired before, she was bone-deep exhausted now.

  Bela let go of her charm and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “That was a hell of a lot of trace. What have they been doing, importing demons and Created?”

  “No idea,” Camille said, “but it’s not good.”

  “I’ll call it in.” John pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Jack and the guys will get in touch with the Port Authority, see who has been shipping in this area, and nail down which of our friendly neighborhood crime lords has hired himself some nasty, furry buddies.”

  “At least we’ll know whom to kill,” Andy said, maybe because she was really ready to kill something. Camille wasn’t even sure Andy would be that discriminating at this point.

  John stepped away from the Sibyls so his secure cell would have a prayer of working, and she heard him relaying in quick, terse sentences what they’d found.

  “What do you think, Camille?” Bela asked. “The park? Farther north—or maybe west? With all that we just saw, they could be hiding out in Jersey.”

  “I know they’ve been concealing themselves, but the East and West Ranger groups have covered just about every inch of that territory while we’ve been watching the docks and hunting at night.” Camille frowned, trying to decide if she was blowing that area off too easily. “They might be in Jersey, but not in the numbers those traces suggested.”

  “They’ve got a central location here in Manhattan,” Andy said. “I feel that in my guts.”

  Camille checked her own instincts. “I’m with you on that.”

  Bela gave it some consideration, then pointed toward the center of the city. “Let’s start where everything seems to start, then. The park.”

  “We’ll focus on the stronger traces and where they go.” Andy smiled. “That works for me, following the insects back to their nests, like good exterminators.”

  “They’re on it,” John said as he stuffed his phone back in his pocket. “Nick and Creed Lowell had already mapped this area out pretty well—this is one of Ari Seneca’s high-activity areas. Blackmore’s pulling together strike patrols to move in and check all of his known sites and listed properties.”

  Camille’s heart stirred, giving her the tiniest flood of energy. After all this time, finally, some definite progress.

  “We’ll go in near Columbus Circle and walk the boundary,” Bela said as they headed through Manhattan toward the park.

  Camille couldn’t help thinking it would be hard to get that close to home and not run to the brownstone to her quiet little room with its quiet little walls and paintings and tuck herself in for the rest of the night.

  Just walk the park. Let John call in what you find—then you can sleep.

  It seemed to take ten hours to get to the entrance, but Camille knew that was her fatigue talking. She walked beside Bela and made herself keep pace in case Bela needed her to enhance the charm again. John was right behind them with Andy, and now and then Camille caught the windy rush of Dio’s energy. She was glad Dio had their back. Dio could be hard to tolerate in so many ways, but she was loyal, sharp, alert, and maybe the best fighter in the whole quad.

  In the early throes of winter, Central Park’s normal dirt and grass and smells seemed muted in favor of the limestone-copper scent of wet rocks and the fertile, loamy odor of rotting leaves. The darkness seemed a little darker, especially around the playground area. They skirted along the south entrance, turning at Grand Army Plaza and heading up toward the zoo. Now and then Bela glanced across the park in the general direction of the brownstone, and Camille wondered if she was tired, too, and thinking about meeting up with Duncan and cuddling until morning.

  When they were about even with Wollman Rink, Bela finally stopped walking, glanced at Camille, then glanced west toward the brownstone again.

  Camille felt the beat of her own pulse pick up all over again. “Are you getting something?”

  Bela tilted her head. “I don’t know.”

  Camille moved a little closer to Bela, fishing around with her own senses. “When did the feeling start?”

  Bela gripped her charm. “Almost the minute we got into the park. I keep thinking it’s more in my head since we’re close to home, but really, what I’m sensing is that way.” She pointed across the park toward Sixty-third and the brownstone.

  Camille took hold of her dinar and offered her hand to Bela, and together they both looked in that direction.

  “I don’t see anything,” Bela said, her mouth twisting in a frown of absolute frustration.

  Camille saw nothing but the park, yet—

  Something was there. Something so slight it might have been a moth’s heartbeat—but it wasn’t normal. Just the slightest bit out of place.

  “I feel it,” she told Bela. “I just can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

  Camille looked back at John and Andy. Both had hands on weapons, waiting.

  She didn’t see anything else but leafless trees and, farther, the city’s buildings, windows glowing like thousands of stars.

  Channels everywhere …

  The world had so many different kinds of channels.

  Camille looked down at the frosty ground.

  Channels and tunnels.

  Years ago, when she’d lost Bette, the Asmodai that killed her had come out of the earth in Van Cortlandt Park at the gatehouse—from yet another remnant of the Old Croton Aqueduct. She’d just spent days herself in chambers and tunnels related to the old waterworks.

  “Maybe they’re underground,” Camille said, not adding, Like the Bengals, just in a different place. “Bela, can you sense any tunnels around here?”

  Bela closed her eyes, and Camille felt the ripple of Bela’s terrasentience move outward, then reach down, deeper than she went when she was just sampling soil for trace and footprints. The frustrated expression on her face increased, and lines formed on her forehead from the effort she was exerting.

  A second or so later, her earth energy brushed past Camille as it returned, and Bela opened her eyes. “Something’s down there, but it’s muted, too.”

  Camille’s insides twitched. The night seemed to get a lot darker and colder, and the buildings surrounding the park seemed that much taller and farther away. “Protected?”

  “Pretty sure, yes.” Bela frowned. “Not good.”

  Camille wondered if the Bengals had carved out large spaces and used some sort of muting charms and energy themselves. For now, she couldn’t assume that.

  “John,” she said, “we think we’re standing on tunnels with deliberately muted energy.”

  He immediately stepped back from Andy and got on the telephone again.

  “Let’s go toward the brownstone,” Bela said, gesturing at the ice rink. “I still think there’s something bigger in that direction.”

  “Something’s off,” John said. “OCU did initial hits on Seneca’s main places, but they’re all empty. People have been there—lots of people, it looks like—but the houses and warehouses are empty now. They won’t know about demon trace until later, after you guys can get there.”

  “Let’s head toward the house and whatever you’re worried about,” Andy said to Bela and Camille. “But don’t push it. We seriously don’t want to engage, not until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  Evil, Camille thought as they moved out. That was the only word that came to her. They were dealing with evil, and it was under them and behind them and beside them, and she didn’t know how long she’d have to teach her quad the boundaries they needed to know. The Rakshasa and their allies were planning something, and it felt huge, and it felt … soon.

  “That’s fucked up,” Bela muttered, elbowing Camille as they went wide of the ice rink, which should have been deserted at this hour.

  The place looked pretty crowded, both the bleachers and the ice.

  “Men,” Andy said. “Humans, it feels like.”<
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  “Yeah,” Bela agreed. “A load of them. Why haven’t the park police run them off?”

  Camille studied the mass of people skulking around the rink. “Maybe it’s some sort of planned meeting and they’ve got a permit.”

  John was a few steps back, using his cell again. “I don’t think it’s a party,” he growled to whoever had answered at OCU. “Forty, maybe fifty guys in dark clothes. Yeah.”

  Camille sensed that some of the men at the rink were watching them pass by even though she and her quad were keeping to the shadows as best they could. Some murmuring broke out among the men. The tone sounded tense. Maybe a little surprised.

  “Let’s blow our asses out of here fast,” Andy suggested, and they picked up speed, running now.

  Camille crossed first into Heckscher Playground, trying to get through the open spaces as fast as she could.

  “Anything?” she called back to Bela as they once more approached the waiting, welcoming cover of trees.

  “Same,” Bela called back. “Hints, but nothing solid.”

  Camille had one hand on her dinar, the other on her sword. Andy muttered softly to herself, and John jogged up closer to Camille.

  A boy stepped out of the woods directly in front of her. She barely had time to process his dark, nondescript features, his astonished expression—and the unnatural light burning in his dark, demon eyes—before the dinar around her neck went off like a grenade against her chest, blasting her backward, blasting the boy backward. As she fell, Camille saw John stagger away a few steps, gripping the sides of his head, snarling, coughing, and swearing as he tried to fight off the human-stripping projective energy that flowed off the coin, completely out of Camille’s control.

  Camille hit the hard, cold ground and rolled back up, leaping between John, her quad, and the boy.

  “Eldest!” she screamed—

  And living hell on earth broke loose all around her.

  Earth tore. Sulfur blasted into the air. The mindless roar of Asmodai rose into the night and the boy staggered to his feet, calling forward what looked like a solid wall of armed, armored Created.

  From behind Camille came the sound of gunshots. She blasted warnings and distress calls through her tattoo, felt her quad’s terror shoot across her arm as they sent their own rudimentary messages.

  The boy and his troops roared at Camille, but they couldn’t move forward against the power of the dinar.

  The boy’s eyes blazed furiously. He was obviously surprised, not ready for the repellant power the dinar gave her. Camille yanked fire energy from every direction, extending the barrier, wrapping the elemental shield around the demons until she was pretty sure the Rakshasa couldn’t advance or retreat, either. Bela ran up beside her and her earth energy flowed into Camille, steadying her. Some of Andy’s cool water energy found her, and from farther away, Dio’s powerful wind trickled in to give her more strength.

  “Aarif,” John said, and the boy’s head whipped toward him.

  Aarif’s face showed a mix of rage and uncertainty.

  He feels the demon inside me. He’s sensing that I’m holding on to some bit or piece of Strada.

  “Your trick does not impress me.” He pointed at John. “However you came to wear that skin, you’ll shed it when you die.”

  John didn’t answer the kid because he was firing his Glock, not at the demon-boy, but behind Camille. She knew he was picking off hulking shadows as they charged toward them from seemingly every direction. The metallic reek of gunpowder drifted over Camille like a dark cloud.

  “Stay close to me,” she shouted to Bela and Andy. “I don’t think the Rakshasa can touch us. Maybe not the Asmodai, either, but I don’t know how long I can hold this.”

  Aarif roared again, drew a knife, and tried to throw it at Camille.

  The protective barrier trapping him made his hand shake, made the blade fall useless on the ground. The Rakshasa Created were trying to raise what looked like Czech Vz. 58s, but they couldn’t get them into firing position.

  Eight hundred rounds per minute on full auto. We’re so dead if I let them move.

  Camille had them for now, though, ringing Aarif and the Created with a solid wall of projective energy, magnified and fueled by the dinar. She couldn’t approach the demons any more than they could approach her, because the coin’s repelling properties worked both ways.

  But maybe she didn’t have to get close.

  The dinar felt so hot against Camille’s skin that she was sure it would catch her own fire. Her battle leathers smoked and seared away from it, and her barrier got even stronger.

  Something stung her leg. Bad.

  She hopped, reaching down toward her calf, but her wall of energy held. The protections she had learned from Elana cut the drain on her from so much focused pyrosentience, or she’d already be passed out on the ground, letting everybody die around her.

  “Can’t do it forever.” She kept her gaze directly on Aarif. “But I can do it for now, asshole, and help’s coming.”

  Sirens cut through the night, lots of sirens, and Camille had a sense of Sibyl energy closing in on them from north, south, east, and west.

  John fired and fired. Andy was shooting, too. Rotten earth pummeled against Camille and the shield she was holding. She limped each time she tried to adjust her position. Green fire spilled across her vision, and sulfurous wind battered her eyes and nose as Asmodai got torn apart.

  “There’s too many!” Andy shouted, but Sibyl battle cries echoed through Central Park, and from the corner of her eye Camille saw dark leather-clad shapes with flaming swords and shining blades and arrows and throwing knifes come blasting out of the trees around Heckscher Playground and the ball fields.

  Fresh gunfire erupted. Camille felt a new sting, this time in her right arm, just above her elbow.

  “What the hell?” John yelled. “Who’s shooting now?”

  Then more gunfire, and more.

  “Automatic weapons!” Andy called. “The men from the rink—we’re fucked.”

  Camille’s throat went totally dry, but she couldn’t do anything other than what she was doing.

  “OCU,” John shouted. “Flanking those assholes.”

  Andy again as she shot more demons. “Cole, who the hell are they? There, coming over the ice. Shit! More Rakshasa!”

  Camille’s heart stuttered, but John was yelling into his phone again. “Bengals. Bengals! Duncan, don’t let the OCU take down the good guys. The Bengals are here!”

  Then the world behind Camille dissolved into more shouting and shooting and snarling and sulfur and fire.

  “Let them have the Asmodai and the shooters,” Camille shouted to her quad. “We’ve got to deal with these demons, or nothing else will matter.”

  She was remembering what Elana told her, about how the original Rakshasa had been defeated, caught in a projective energy trap. Camille had no frigging idea how to make one, but she wondered what would happen if—

  “John, can you cover us? Keep the Asmodai off our asses?”

  “Nobody’s touching your ass but me,” he called back, and she heard the metallic jamming sound of him loading a fresh clip.

  She shifted her attention to Bela, who was still standing next to her, silent and determined, feeding earth energy into the shield Camille held.

  “Can you call Dio in?” Camille asked her.

  “Done.” Bela raised one arm and siphoned off a targeted blast of earth energy.

  Less than a minute later, Camille heard Dio’s check-in shout of “Here!” through all the gunfire and roaring and the cries of Sibyls cutting down whatever was after them. Keeping her back to the battle felt insane, but if an Eldest and all these Created made it into the mix, it might turn into a slaughter—and not of the bad guys.

  “They’re covered in armor,” Andy said as she and Dio pulled in behind Camille and Bela. “How can we pierce their hearts, behead them, and burn them to ashes if they’re made out of metal?”

 
“For now, we just need to surround them.” Camille kept her eyes and body very still as she spoke. She spread out her arms to hold her shield, which was getting harder to do. The energy was draining her after all, because there were so many demons and because this was taking time. “I’ve got them roped off, but I think if we take positions along all four axes and join the flow of our energy, we might be able to do more than hold them.”

  Nobody questioned her.

  Bela took off north. Andy went north, then west, and Dio ran south. John stayed at Camille’s back, coming closer, but not too close, because the energy coming off her would strip him to Rakshasa in a second if it flowed over him. He fired and fired again, seemingly oblivious to the threat or fighting past it because he wouldn’t leave her.

  Camille tasted earth energy, then air, then water as her quad got into position, anchored themselves, and let loose with their sentient powers. Each of them had the charms Camille had made gripped tightly in their fists.

  Camille didn’t dare touch the dinar. It would burn her fingers down to the knuckle. It was all she could do to soak up enough of its fire and heat to keep it from branding her and sizzling straight through her breastbone.

  They don’t know barriers, she reminded herself as she gathered their energy and added it to the wall of power she had wrapped around Aarif and the Created. Be careful. Careful …

  Aarif and his squad of armored monsters howled as Camille hooked in the last of the four elements. The boy didn’t look furious anymore. He looked scared. Camille knew that whatever his plan had been, this wasn’t the scenario he’d been aiming to achieve.

  “Welcome to my world, asshole,” she muttered. “Nothing ever goes as planned, does it?”

  And she imagined the shield pulling tighter. She squeezed it in. Brought the energy toward her.

  The Rakshasa Eldest howled, shattering the night, and all the kitties with him elbowed against the energy, hitting it with fists, helmets, the tips of guns that still wouldn’t aim at Camille or her quad. They got a lot closer together, all the Rakshasa, and Camille kept the energy where it was and gave herself a moment to breathe.