by Anna Windsor
“Smells like cat piss,” the woman said, her bag rattling as she bounced it off her knee.
The man responded only with a “Shh.”
He surveyed the heaps of metal, searching them with elemental senses most OCU officers didn’t possess. The Eldest, all but a few, were already dead. They must not have had time to assume flame form to shield themselves from this terrible attack, so they were gone from the earth now, forevermore. In some ways a blessing, but in many ways a pity.
Likely the Sibyls and OCU thought these few survivors were deceased, so faint were their heartbeats and traces. It took a special elemental gift to pick up such small signs of life. Soon enough they would finish their slow burns beneath the metal casing, and go to whatever maker claimed tiger demons as his own.
The man gripped the handles of his small black satchel and kept searching, but the woman pointed toward the front of the room. “He’s up there and he’s still alive. Barely.”
The man glanced over his shoulder at the sentry and sent some elemental energy his way, enough to make the guard crumple to his knees. He’d wake in a few hours, which was plenty of time for what they needed to do.
The two approached the metal lump containing the crippled, dying body of Tarek, the Rakshasa culla.
This tomb was sloppier than the rest, cobbled and splashed instead of applied in a single sheet. The man knew it was because Tarek had been out in the tunnels when the fire Sibyl Camille Fitzgerald took out his entire race. She must have used recycled metal from the chamber floor to trap Tarek when he came for her.
“Come on,” the woman said, reaching for the man’s hand.
He smiled. Took her slender fingers in his.
The two of them focused their talents on the metal, melting it away, sheet by sheet, careful to do no more damage to the demon within.
Soon enough, they could see his golden-furred face, though he didn’t have much fur left to him. Angry burn welts, bleeding cuts, lumps of molten ore affixed to his scalded skin. These were elemental wounds, and they would never heal, at least not completely.
The man pulled off his helmet, letting the demon see his face.
Tarek’s dark eyes went wide with helpless fury.
Griffen leaned in, making sure his blond hair and blue eyes made an impression. Then he gave Tarek his most sympathetic look, because he did feel some sympathy for the trapped, damaged animal.
“You poor bastard,” he said. “This is what happens when you make enemies, now, isn’t it?”
Of course Griffen had had his own aims when he “worked” for Tarek. Of course he’d been chasing his own angles—but the demon never should have touched his sister. Rebecca was sacrosanct. Nobody put hands on her. She had special gifts, and one day he would find the right breeding partner for her. Matched with the right male, she might just give birth to a child with skills even more powerful than their own. Constant striving for perfection—that’s the way their father would have wanted it.
Griffen heard clinks and rattles as Rebecca unwound the elemental cuffs from her bag, then got to work unfolding the very official morgue body bag. Tarek could see these things, and somehow his eyes got even wider.
“We’ll keep your pain to a minimum.” Griffen took a syringe out of his own satchel. “And if you’re polite and cooperative, we’ll probably even feed you more than once a week.”
As Rebecca cuffed the demon’s twisted arms, Griffen gave the beast a shot so he wouldn’t start howling. On the off chance Tarek died before they could get him back to the holding cell they had prepared for him, Griffen went ahead and took a full complement of blood and saliva samples. That was the kicker about the kind of research and production they were planning. A live donor was required.
After Griffen packed his precious samples in the satchel, he and Rebecca lifted the cuffed and bound demon out of his metal prison, placed him in the body bag, and zipped him up tight. One of them could have done it—neither of them had the paltry strength of regular humans—but if anyone was watching, a move like that might give them away. Sometimes appearances were everything. The van they had waiting outside even had the proper insignias and initials stenciled onto it so nobody would question two officers carrying the bag to the back of the van, placing it in the hold, then driving away.
“Don’t you worry,” Griffen told Tarek as they hauled him out of the chamber, only banging him on a few of the metal tombs as they passed. “This time things will go better, Tarek. I’m going to make sure we do this right.”
( 41 )
John Cole had never known a longer, more frustrating two weeks in his entire life. Camille was somewhere out in the world alone and hurting, thinking God only knew what about herself, and he could do exactly nothing about it.
He sat in the living room of the brownstone on the leather sofa where Camille always liked to be, his arms folded, staring into the dark, swirling projective mirrors like one of them might tell him a secret. Maybe a few of them would blink to life and show him scenes with Camille in them.
Wherever she’d gone, it wasn’t in New York City, not unless she’d come up with her own muting charms. Every Sibyl who could twitch, hobble, or move had been out looking—and even Sibyls from other cities had pitched in to help. Elana had explained that in addition to Camille’s deep emotional shock at killing so many living things at once, innocent and guilty alike, she was likely suffering from severe aftereffects from the projective energy itself. If her senses weren’t still numbed, her emotions and thoughts were, so she was vulnerable. Maybe even helpless.
And that killed him.
Even the Sibyl Mothers had offered to help. Once. But they’d barely gotten out of Bela’s living room alive. John didn’t expect they’d be back anytime soon.
The kitchen door opened and closed softly, and John heard no further noise, so he knew it was Elana. Sure enough, the tiny little woman crossed to one of the leather chairs and took a seat opposite from him, her back to the mirrors over her head.
“Nothing from this morning’s patrols?” she asked, her lyrical voice as soft and grandmotherly as ever.
“Nothing,” he said, feeling the word like a weight on his heart. Camille. Beautiful. You’ve got to give me a clue. Just one hint and I’ll take it from there. That’s what he’d tell her if he had three seconds to get her a message.
Elana turned her head, listening for sounds, then focused her attention back on John. “Where are the others?”
He glanced at his watch. “They should be coming in from Jersey in a few.”
He couldn’t help noticing the faint undertones of lily everywhere in the house when there wasn’t too much activity stirring stuff up. He still had pretty sharp senses, even though they didn’t rise to Spider-Man level now, at least not completely.
Elana seemed to go away in her head for a few seconds, and when she came back, she said, “I don’t think Camille is anywhere close to here, John.”
“I don’t think so, either, but it makes them feel better to look. Sometimes it makes me feel better, too.” Elana couldn’t see his face, so he didn’t worry about his scowl or the fact he’d picked up one of Andy’s empty cans off the floor. If he crushed it up real good, he could probably get off a pretty good pitch at one of those mirrors.
“She’ll return when she’s able,” Elana said.
“Yeah? And after your, ah, bad experience in Rakshasa killing, how long was it before you were willing to face people again?”
Elana gave this some thought. “Two centuries, give or take—but I lost my quad. Camille didn’t.”
Two hundred years. John left that alone for now. He had a demon’s body, so theoretically he could live as long as any Sibyl, and he’d wait as long as it took—but he didn’t want to wait that long. Two hundred years without Camille would make the world a dark, dead place to him, and he just couldn’t fathom that.
Something had been nagging at his mind a little, so he took this rare moment when the house was Sibyl-free to ask Elana
about it. “I’m sorry if this is intrusive, but after what you just said about losing your quad … You didn’t lose them all. Ona made it, and you knew she was still alive. Why did you never go see her?”
Elana reacted to this with pain, as he’d figured she would, but also with some shame and even humility. “I feared my presence would bring her only heartache, and hers the same for me.” Her head turned in the general direction of the projective mirrors. “Keara held that against me. She’s always had a soft spot for Ona.”
“Keara.” John wasn’t sure he heard that bit correctly. “Mother Keara? Hate to disillusion you, but there’s nothing soft about that sawed-off piece of gristle.”
Elana’s laugh was brief but genuine. “She wasn’t always a blustery old woman, John, any more than I was. When Keara was a girl, she was tender and much maligned by her peers because she wasn’t easy on the eye. Ona gave her comfort more than once in those tunnels down below Motherhouse Ireland.”
Answers that raised more questions. Were all ancient Sibyls good at that trick? “How do you know that?”
“Because I have an unusual connection to Ona, perhaps because of the ways we joined our energies. I’ve been able now and again to have glimpses of Ona’s life and thoughts, to see images she’s seeing, especially when she’s more emotional.” Elana’s chin dipped toward her chest. The shame was winning out now. “I should have gone to see her. I have no valid excuses.”
He shrugged, more for his benefit than Elana’s. “You could go now. Nothing’s stopping you.”
“Perhaps I will, once we locate Camille.” Elana turned in her chair, seemingly to keep the projective mirrors more squarely at her back. “Truth be told, I’ve been very selfish and afraid on that point, seeing Ona again, and I still am.”
John had some understanding of this from his battle experiences, so he left it alone. Besides, he didn’t want to keep at this until he got angry—but not because it would set off the demon in his head. Those days were over. Camille had killed Strada’s essence, just burned it right out of him, and Elana had confirmed that before beginning her work with Jack Blackmore and the OCU, integrating her few surviving Bengal fighters into their advisory and ancillary forces. If the Bengals had good control over their form, Jack was getting identities for them and opening doors to get them into police academies. Ben was taking this route. He was a natural for police work, and John hoped he’d stay with New York’s unit. Duncan was spending most of his time at headquarters these days, helping out the Lowell brothers with their demon integration lessons.
The chimes over the front door gave a soft ring, and John couldn’t help his reaction. His heart jumped like crazy, and he stared at the door thinking, Maybe …
Until he heard Dio tell Andy to get the hell off her foot, and Maggie Cregan laughing at both of them.
Bela came through the door first, with Sheila Gray and Karin Maros behind her. Maggie and Dio and Andy brought up the rear, arguing about what area they should cover next. All the Sibyls had on jeans and sweatshirts, to better blend in with the background when they conducted their day searches.
“I think we’d have better luck in Ireland,” Maggie told Dio. “Maybe she’s taking a sabbatical in the bogs, or one of the monasteries and convents closer to Dublin.”
“If I wanted to hide out, I wouldn’t go to Ireland,” Dio said. “I’d go someplace nobody would think to look, not in a million years.”
Old ground. They’d been covering it for days, and it wasn’t getting them anywhere.
Elana waited for the women to get inside, her head turning, tracking the sound of one voice in particular. Andy came straight to her and knelt beside her, and Elana rubbed the top of Andy’s head like she was a good-luck charm. “Do you need anything?” Andy asked.
“Your laughter is a comfort,” Elana said, and smiled at her. “Perhaps tonight you could create me a new sandwich for dinner. I like adventures.”
Bela, Dio, and the East Ranger group eyed Elana like she might be missing a few straws in her bale. John still had indigestion from something Andy had fed him the night before. Elana and Andy were getting on well, though. Andy was having quarters prepared at Motherhouse Kérkira for Elana, and John suspected that one day very soon the old woman would finally get to go home again, truly go home, and be among her own.
Any Bengals she had been caring for who couldn’t or didn’t want to stay in the city and work with the OCU or live out in the world on their own would go to the island with her. John figured the mix of creatures and personalities would make that Motherhouse even more unique than it already was.
A shiver of motion caught his eye, and he glanced at the big mirror over Elana’s head. He motioned to Maggie Cregan, and as the chimes over the communications platform gave a ring, he asked, “Is that thing doing whatever it does?”
“It is,” Maggie said with some trepidation, her gaze darting to Bela, Dio, and Andy. “Somebody’s coming through from Motherhouse Ireland, and whoever it is, she’s strong enough not to need assistance on this end.”
The room went crypt-quiet as John stood, his heart doing that funny thing again.
Please. He stared at the mirror, then the table. Camille’s whole quad was gazing at the same spot, waiting. Hoping just like he was.
Please, please …
The smoke on the mirror broke and the surface went clear. In one split second, John saw a big stone chamber and a figure in green robes—and a split second later, the woman in green robes was standing on the table in the brownstone’s living room.
He got to be disappointed again, because whoever it was, she was half Camille’s height and giving off smoke like a pipe on fire. Then he got to be pissed when the woman pushed back her green hood and ropes of gray hair spilled over her aged, hunched shoulders.
Mother Keara stared him down first and managed a semi-polite nod.
“The only points I’m giving you are for not showing up armed,” he said, thinking about going downstairs. He didn’t need this kind of bullshit right now.
Mother Keara didn’t come back at him and she didn’t try to speak to Dio, which said a little for her intelligence, even if her sanity was questionable for coming here in the first place. The old woman turned on the platform until she was facing Bela, Andy, and Elana.
“I wasn’t certain when it first happened, but I’m sure now, because I’ve looked in every corner.” Mother Keara gestured back toward the mirror open on Motherhouse Ireland’s communications chamber. “Wherever Camille went, she took Ona with her, if that helps you any in yer figurin’. Neither of them used the chamber to transport themselves, so we’ve no way of tellin’ you more.”
Andy shrugged, and Bela shook her head. “We’ll give it some thought.” Then, grudgingly, since Mother Keara had some history with her, “Thank you for coming to tell us yourself.”
John glanced at Elana, and his instincts gave a little jangle. Her expression had gone even more distant and flat, but that might be because Mother Keara was in the room with her. His expression probably looked pretty distant and flat, too.
Mother Keara turned to leave, but she spotted Maggie Cregan standing back near the front door with her crew, like they might be about to make a break for it if things got rough.
“You,” Mother Keara said, pointing at her. “What have you found?”
Maggie seemed stunned by the question, but she had enough spice to answer. “Nothing. Why would I have more luck than anyone else?”
Mother Keara stared at her, shock mingling with a tinge of disgust. “You gave that sword of yours plenty of Camille’s blood in your youth. It ought to have quite a taste for her by now.”
Maggie’s mouth came open, and Bela looked like somebody had just kicked her right in the ass. John felt like somebody had kicked him, too.
He was about to ask Mother Keara more about how that sword worked, but the old fire Sibyl walked right off the communications platform into thin air, her image appearing in the projective mirror as sh
e crossed the platform at Motherhouse Ireland. A few seconds later, the mirror went dark and started its swirling again.
“Easy come, easy go,” Dio said, and Bela had to catch Dio’s wrist before she let go of the throwing knife she’d pulled out to shatter the mirror behind Mother Keara.
Bela pulled Dio around with her to face Maggie. “Does that have any merit—about the sword? It does remember whom it’s cut, and it does try to find them in battle, right?”
“Yes, all of that’s right.” Maggie was frowning so deeply John knew she wasn’t blowing this off at all. “Whether or not we can use it to find her, I honestly don’t know. I’ve only dealt with it in close quarters, but I know some of my ancestors used it to track escaped criminals. They’d cut everyone sent to the jails, just so the blade would know their taste.”
“It has to be projective in some way,” Bela said, and everybody hesitated.
John thought the connection was pretty clear now. Projective energy equaled huge power—and huge danger. As far as anybody knew, Camille hadn’t caused any tsunamis with what she did to kill the Rakshasa, but six buildings in Harlem had fallen into a sinkhole that city engineers swore shouldn’t—couldn’t—exist. But it did now.
“Could you bring the blade down to the lab?” Bela asked Maggie. “Maybe if we can study the energy a little bit, we could—”
“That won’t be necessary.” Elana got to her feet. She was holding Andy’s hand but looking away from everyone, at the wall to the left of John’s head. Slowly Elana oriented her face back toward John, and she was more tense that he’d ever seen her.
His heart got going again with its funny pounding, and the hope started to rise. The stupid hope. The crazy hope. But this time disappointment didn’t follow.
“If Ona’s with Camille,” Elana said, her voice slow and halting, like she couldn’t quite believe she was committing herself to this, “then I think I know exactly where they are.”
“Can you do it?” John asked, trying not to sound like a teenager with his eagerness. “Can you face going there to take me to her?”
